At the talks in Sofia, Bulgaria, most countries supported a faster process that would see three flagship reports assessing the state of climate science delivered by mid-2028, in time for the next global stocktake – the UN’s scorecard of collective climate action.

But a group of high-emitting developing countries made up of China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia and South Africa – backed by Kenya – opposed an accelerated timeline, citing concerns that it would be harder to include scientists from the Global South, three sources present at the talks told Climate Home.

Governments were unable to reach a decision for the second time this year after “fraught talks” in January ended with the same outcome. The issue will be debated again at the next gathering in February 2025, while a separate expert meeting is tasked with drafting the outline of those reports by the end of 2024.

Fight over climate science

Adão Soares Barbosa, IPCC representative for Timor-Leste within the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group, expressed his disappointment over the lack of agreement in Sofia resulting from “strong polarisation in the room”.

“If the assessment reports are not able to feed information into the global stocktake process, what are they good for?” he said, speaking to Climate Home.

Joyce Kimutai, who represented Kenya at the Sofia talks, said her country’s opposition to the proposed shortened timeline was “absolutely not intended to frustrate the process” but to highlight the challenges countries with more limited resources would be facing.

“With such a tight timeline, it is likely that we will produce a report that is not comprehensive, not robust. We found that very problematic,” she told Climate Home on Monday.

IPCC delegates exchange views in an informal huddle in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

The primary purpose of the IPCC is to provide credible scientific assessments to the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC) and national decision-makers. The findings of its reports – which are usually compiled over several years by scientists working on a voluntary basis around the world – have been highly influential. They synthesise the latest research on climate change, as well as efforts to curb planet-heating emissions and adapt to the impacts of global warming.

The sixth series, whose final report was issued in March 2023, played a prominent role in informing the first UNFCCC global stocktake which resulted in governments agreeing for the first time to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels” at COP28 in Dubai last December.

But some fossil fuel-rich countries like Saudi Arabia – which have pushed back against clear language on the need to cut production – have previously opposed strong recognition of IPCC reports in UNFCCC negotiations.

The UN climate body has officially requested that its scientific counterpart align its activities with the timeline of the next global stocktake. The IPCC’s input will be “invaluable” for the international review of climate action, Simon Stiell, chief of the UN climate body, told the IPCC meeting in January.

Reputation ‘at risk’

As he opened the session in Sofia, the IPCC chair Jim Skea warned of a “complex and testing” agenda.

The discussion over the report production schedule would have “far-reaching implications in terms of the timeliness of our products, and the inclusivity of both our own processes and the science that is being assessed”, he added. 

Scientists and government officials were presented with a proposal drafted by the IPCC secretariat – its administrative arm – which would see the assessment reports completed between May and August 2028. That would be a few months before the global stocktake process is scheduled to end in November 2028.

The IPCC must produce its flagship report in time for the next UN global stocktake

A majority of countries, including EU member states, the UK, the US and most vulnerable developing nations, supported the proposal, stressing the importance of the scientific reports feeding into the global stocktake, according to sources and a summary of discussions by the IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Many supporters added that the IPCC’s reputation would otherwise be at risk.

Small island states and least-developed countries argued that IPCC input is crucial for those that lack capacity to produce their own research and are most vulnerable to the immediate impacts of climate change, according to the IISD summary.

But a dozen developing countries – with India, Saudi Arabia and China being the most vocal – opposed speeding up the process, arguing that more time is needed to ensure greater inclusion of experts and research from the Global South, which would result in “robust and rigorous” scientific output.

South Africa, Russia, Kenya, Algeria, Burundi, Congo, Jordan, Libya and Venezuela expressed similar views, according to IISD.

More time for more voices

India said that “producing the best science needs time, haste leads to shoddy work”, while Saudi Arabia claimed that the shortened timeline would “lead to incomplete science and would be a disservice to the world”, according to the IISD summary of the discussions.

Kenya’s Kimutai told Climate Home that producing scientific literature and reviewing submissions takes a lot of time and, unlike their counterparts in richer countries, scientists in the Global South can rarely count on the help of junior researchers at well-funded institutions.

“We love this process – we find it important,” she added, “but we’re trying to say that, while it may be an easy process in other regions, it is not for us”.

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The IPCC has long struggled with ensuring adequate representation of expert voices from the Global South. Only 35% of the authors working on its sixth and latest assessment report hailed from developing countries, according to a study published in the journal Climate, up from 31% in the previous cycle.

In Sofia, several delegates pointed out that the IPCC is working to improve inclusivity and that a slight extension of the schedule would not be the solution. Similar views were aired by forty IPCC authors from developing countries in a letter circulated ahead of last week’s talks, urging countries to ensure that the reports are ready in time for the global stocktake.

While recognising concerns over the inclusion of under-represented communities, they argued that it would not be achieved by allowing more time but through “deliberate efforts to counterbalance long-standing inequalities” in the research world.

Writing for Climate Home, Malian scientist Youba Sokona, one of the letter’s authors, warned that the IPCC risks losing its relevance and influence over global climate policy-making if its output cannot be used in the global stocktake.

IPCC Chair Jim Skea gavels the session to a close. Photo: Photo by IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

Despite lengthy exchanges, scientists in Sofia could not find a solution and decided to postpone a decision on the timeline until the next IPCC session in February 2025, when countries will also need to agree on the outline of the reports’ content.

Kenya’s Kimutai has proposed a compromise that would see reports on adaptation and mitigation completed in time for the global stocktake, with a third on the physical science of climate change coming in later.

Richard Klein, a senior researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and a lead author of previous IPCC reports, told Climate Home the ongoing row was “problematic”. “With these delays, a shorter [report] cycle in time for the global stocktake may not be feasible anymore, which in turn makes it less likely we will see ambitious nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) after that process,” he warned.

Expert scientists from the IPCC will meet again this December at a “scoping” session to sketch out a framework for what the assessment reports should include.

Barbosa of Timor-Leste is worried that those discussions will also become “heavily politicised”.

“We are concerned that high-emitting developing countries will try water down the work on emission-cutting measures and keep out strong messages on things like the need to phase out fossil fuels,” he told Climate Home.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seventh Assessment Report can and must be ready in time for the second Global Stocktake (GST).

The IPCC report plays a pivotal role in assessing climate change science and informing government decisions, especially in the context of multilateral negotiations. 

The GST is a key element of the Paris Agreement, designed to evaluate the world’s progress towards long-term climate goals. It must be conducted “in the light of equity and the best available science,” underscoring the importance of IPCC assessments as a primary input for the GST.

As an IPCC author from the Global South, I believe that ensuring the IPCC cycle aligns with GST timelines is crucial for maintaining the integrity of international climate cooperation. 

Efforts to enhance the inclusion of developing country voices should be prioritized over inordinate delays, which could risk the irrelevance of the IPCC report for the second Global Stocktake – taking place in 2028.

Concerns over accelerating process

A delayed production at the three IPCC working groups—which craft three reports covering the physical science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation— is being justified under three main arguments.

First, those in favour of delaying the report claim that expediting the process could risk a lack of representation of underrepresented communities. A delay may impact the inclusion of voices from the Global South and non-English speakers, reducing the diversity of perspectives essential for a comprehensive assessment.

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Another argument is that the topics covered in the report could also be reduced in range. Ensuring a broad array of topics is vital for addressing the multifaceted nature of climate change and providing a holistic understanding.

Finally, delays would risk spreading out key messages from the different IPCC working groups. Timely integration of insights from the different working groups is crucial for a cohesive and comprehensive assessment.

Measures for inclusion 

The IPCC’s role is to provide credible scientific assessments to the UNFCCC process and national decision-makers. Time constraints may lead to some compromises, but it is better to minimize these than to forego IPCC input entirely. The IPCC must ensure its assessments are available in time for the second GST to maintain its relevance and impact on global climate policy-making.

On the inclusion of underrepresented communities, ensuring representation is more about deliberate efforts than merely the time available. Creating networks for southern scholars, facilitating special issues in academic journals, and convening regional meetings can enhance representation.

Delegates convene in a huddle on the fourth day of IPCC-61 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

Focused attention on these efforts in the next IPCC cycle is more effective than strictly adhering to traditional timelines. My experience as an IPCC author from the Global South indicates that inclusion results from proactive initiatives rather than extended timelines.

Successive IPCC cycles have increasingly included literature from developing regions and better represented perspectives from the Global South. For instance, AR6 highlighted issues of equity, impacts on vulnerable communities, and development pathways relevant to developing countries.

Without IPCC input, the GST may lack essential Southern perspectives. The direction of travel within the IPCC has been towards greater concern for under-represented regions, countries, and research communities. Removing IPCC input risks losing an important source of southern perspectives.

No risk of losing quality

Accelerating the cycle by a few months does not significantly compromise the report’s robustness. Past assessments have been completed within five to six years, and with urgency, drafting and expert reviews can be slightly expedited.

Reviews by governments remain crucial to the science-policy interface. The effective time required for a single working group report is approximately four years from the call for experts for the scoping meeting. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, it is feasible to shorten the drafting and review process by a few months without compromising the quality.

Concerns about topic range and integration can be mitigated through proper planning of publications and coordinated efforts across working groups. Modifying the assessment report process to be more flexible is preferable to rendering the IPCC policy irrelevant. Appropriate planning can achieve a significant degree of integration, even if not perfect.

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Designing the IPCC cycle in ways that prevent input to the GST risks undercutting an essential element of international cooperation—providing scientific assessment to political decision-makers.

Concerns about the under-representation of developing country voices are legitimate but can be better addressed by redoubling efforts to enhance these voices in the IPCC, rather than through delay. Ensuring timely IPCC input to the second GST is essential for effective global action on climate change and for the voices of developing countries to be adequately represented.

This opinion piece is adapted from a letter written by Dr Sokona and 39 other IPCC authors from developing countries ahead of the IPCC’s plenary session in Sofia, Bulgaria

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That is after Saudi Arabia, India and China opposed attempts to ensure the scientific body would provide its assessment in time for the next global stocktake, the UN’s scorecard of collective climate action, due in 2028, according to sources present at the IPCC talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, last week.

Following “fraught” discussions that ran all night Friday, governments postponed a final decision on the timeline until the next meeting scheduled in the summer.

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Swiss climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne, who is the vice chair of an IPCC working group, said she “was not totally surprised” to see opposition to the proposal.

“We know that some countries do not necessarily want climate policy to advance very fast and IPCC information will be critical for informing the global stocktake”, she added. “But I was surprised by the lack of willingness to even negotiate on these points”.

The findings of previous IPCC reports played a prominent role in informing the first global stocktake, which resulted in governments agreeing for the first time to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels” at Cop28 last December.

Timeline disagreement

The IPCC met last week to decide the work programme for its seventh assessment cycle, which officially started in July 2023 with the election of its new chair Jim Skea.

Ahead of the talks, the UNFCCC officially requested that the scientific body align its activities with the timeline of the next global stocktake. The IPCC input would be “invaluable” for the scoring exercise, Simon Stiell, chief of the UN climate body, said.

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But sticking to a 2028 deadline would mean either fast-tracking its work or shortening the IPCC’s entire cycle from seven years down to five years. Small island nations, least developed countries and some rich countries favoured this option, sources told Climate Home.

But a group of governments, led by Saudi Arabia, India and China, argued the accelerated programme would force to complete the scientific process “in a hurry” and would not leave enough time for developing countries to review the output, according to sources.

Speed and quality

Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s chief climate negotiator, told Climate Home that he was not opposed to the principle of IPCC producing reports in time for the global stocktake but only if “we are not rushing science to deliver in a short timeline”.

“The question is ‘can you provide the same level of quality in 2028 or not?’”, he added. “Otherwise, the credibility of the IPCC would come under question”.

The IPCC normally publishes its reports every five to seven years and three scientists involved in its activities told Climate Home it is entirely possible to conclude its next round of assessments by 2028.

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“Linking the assessment cycle to the global stocktake makes a lot of sense to me”, said Richard Klein, a senior researcher at SEI and a lead author of previous IPCC reports. “It is the gold standard of everything to do with climate science and the IPCC was explicitly set up to inform climate policy, including the UNFCCC’s processes”.

Eleventh-hour compromise

The issue caused major divisions between governments throughout the meeting, which “teetered on the brink of failure on Saturday morning”, according to a summary of discussions by the IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin. The lack of consensus led to “IPCC Chair Jim Skea half-jokingly warning that the time to leave the venue was near and further consultations would shortly have to be held on the street”, the report added.

Negotiators huddle looking for an agreement on the final day of the IPCC meeting. Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

Most critical discussions took place when many delegates, especially from vulnerable countries, had already left because of their inability to change complicated travel arrangements. Seneviratne said that was morally “questionable”.

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Negotiators eventually struck a last minute compromise. The final agreement puts the IPCC’s bureau – an advisory group – in charge of proposing a timeline for the assessment reports that could be decided at the next meeting.

Seneviratne said that, while she would have wanted a “more explicit response” on this point, “the decision does not prevent the IPCC from delivering information in time for the global stocktake”.

But Klein argued the lack of a firm commitment leaves the process stuck in limbo. “There’s no guarantee that there will be agreement on the next meeting and, meanwhile, the working groups need to get started now. They don’t have the luxury of waiting until the next meeting”, he added.

No extra special reports

Egypt’s Nasr said he was satisfied with the meeting’s outcome: “It confirmed that reports will have the same level of comprehensiveness, will consider all literature and will allow for full engagement for developing countries”.

But he expressed disappointment over the absence of a special report on adaptation, which some African countries had asked for. Governments have instead only agreed to update technical guidelines first devised in 1994 to help countries measure climate impacts and adjust to them.

The IPCC will also produce a special report on climate change and cities, which had already been agreed on, and a methodology report on carbon removal, including carbon capture and storage (CCS).

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Representatives of countries from an array of different regions, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and small island states, pushed to be singled out as particularly vulnerable.

Tanzania and Timor-Leste asked that the world’s poorest countries, known as least developed countries (LDCs), be added to a list of impacted communities, according to a report of the meeting by think-tank IISD.

Africa and small island developing states (Sids) were nearly cut out of one section on vulnerabilities, the IISD report says, and replaced by a reference to “developing and least developed countries”.

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But there was a strong push from many delegates to retain them, particularly as most of those regions’ representatives had already left the talks to approve the report, as they had to catch flights home from Switzerland.

Mexico and Chile wanted to add Latin America to the list of regions that are particularly vulnerable while India wanted Asia included, according to IISD’s report.

The final document lists Africa, Sids, LDCs, Central and South America, Asia and the Arctic as particularly vulnerable.

The benefits of vulnerability

What makes some communities more vulnerable than others is not just physical factors like sea level rise but also social factors like poverty, governance, building standards and infrastructure.

This makes naming specific parts of the world as vulnerable a politically sensitive topic.

The inclusion of the Arctic as one of the most climate vulnerable places in the world, for example, was significant because it came just days after the US approved the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope.

There are various reasons for wanting to be named as vulnerable, including global recognition and better access to climate finance.

Last year’s Cop27 climate talks agreed that a new fund for climate victims should be targeted at countries who are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.

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Samoan ambassador Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, who chairs the alliance of small island states (Aosis), said making specific note of the risks to these islands was “imperative in the context of climate justice”.

“The fact is that we are already facing devastating losses and damages of great magnitude, and funds we should be investing into sustainable development initiatives must be diverted to help us cope with climate change impacts,” he said.

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But recognising growing impacts also gives states the responsibility of acting on them.

Jörn Birkmann researches climate vulnerability at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and was coordinating lead author of one of the underlying IPCC reports.

He told Climate Home: “It seems like governments fear that if their country is not mentioned, they could receive less support (e.g. global adaptation funds),”

He added: “Or vice versa; if they are mentioned it might lead to a stigmatisation or might raise questions about the role of governance.”

Measuring vulnerability

Birkmann said studies on human vulnerability all point to the same global hotspots, particularly Africa.

But even though many governments acknowledge this, there are significant tensions when measuring and mapping human vulnerability.

“It is still difficult in [a summary for policymakers report] to name specific global regions that are more vulnerable than others,” he said.

“The synthesis report is mentioning some regions, but it seems to be much easier for governments to agree on general sentences, rather than pointing to areas or countries where such deficits are evident.”

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Although it misses a lot of nuance about who is vulnerable, Birkmann welcomes the fact that the report recognises global hotspots, “since the success of adaptation and resilience building also depends on the starting point communities and countries have”.

He believes adaptation strategies should not just focus on physical phenomena and climatic hazards such as storms, but also on structures and interventions that reduce human vulnerability, such as poverty reduction, education or fighting corruption – the latter being “a very controversial topic in the political arena”.

Furthermore, when new financial mechanisms for loss and damage agreed at Cop27 are being put into practice, he said it would be helpful to define adaptation goals, not just those on emission reduction.

“These goals should also take into account the very different starting points of regions/countries/communities to build resilience,” he said.” The level of human vulnerability might be such a benchmark of the different starting points.”

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“Current global financial flows for adaptation are insufficient for, and constrain implementation of, adaptation options, especially in developing countries”, the scientists report says.

Wealthy governments have failed to provide $100 billion of climate finance a year they promised to developing countries by 2020, with the US responsible for the vast majority of the shortfall.

Finance for adapting to climate change – rather than cutting emissions – has been particularly low.

At Cop26 in 2021, all countries agreed that developed nations would double their adaptation finance by 2025 on 2019 levels and a group of self-proclaimed “champions” has been set up to try to implement this.

Adaptation becomes harder

The IPCC’s scientists warned time for adaptation action is rapidly running out because measures will increasingly become ‘constrained and less effective’ as temperatures rise.

When countries can no longer adapt to climate change, they will suffer devastating loss and damage as a consequence of escalating climate-related hazards like heatwaves, droughts and storms.

The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) estimates $340 billion will be needed every year for adaptation, but only about 7% of climate finance flows are currently spent in that direction.

‘A huge injustice’

Aditi Mukherji, one of the authors of the report, told Climate Home that the lack of funding forces low-income countries into further debt.

Seventy-one percent of public climate finance was provided through loans in 2020, with grants having much smaller role, according to the latest assessment by the OECD.

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“It is a huge injustice”, Mukherji said. “Least developed countries and coastal communities who have not caused the problem are now having to take loans to solve the problem. It makes hardly any sense.”

The IPCC report summarises the state of knowledge of climate change science, its impacts and risks and the progress made on mitigation and adaptation. The text was approved by all member governments after a week-long session in Switzerland.

Insufficient climate action

Scientists say the pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change.

While highlighting the lack of money for adaptation, the report also says climate finance also needs to increase ‘many-fold’ for emissions-cutting measures in order to achieve climate goals.

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Despite absorbing the overwhelming majority of the money pot, funding for measures to cut emissions still falls short of the levels needed to limit warming to 1.5°C across all sectors and regions.

“Adaptation and mitigation are closely interlinked,” Mukherji said. “Unless we reduce our emissions now we are locked in a cycle of irreversible impacts”.

“We cannot think we can continue to emit, make the planet warmer and those who are affected will continue to adapt. That is not going to happen. Adaptation will always have some limits.”

Adaptation limits reached

The report says some tropical, coastal, polar and mountain ecosystems have already reached hard adaptation limits. That means any action becomes unfeasible to avoid risks. An example is when a small island becomes uninhabitable due to sea level rises and lack of freshwater.

The IPCC has also found ‘increased evidence’ of maladaption, which occurs when measures backfire and increase vulnerabilities.

Mukherji says there is a need for a less technocratic approach. “The most appropriate actions need to be decided by those who are most affected. You cannot go from outside and impose views on the communities,” she said.

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The study published in the journal Nature found that a typical 1.5C energy transition model expects nations like China, India and South Africa to get off coal faster than any country has ever got off any energy source before.

But these models ask for much slower reductions in oil and gas – fuels that tend to be produced and used more in wealthy countries.

The study’s lead author Greg Muttitt told Climate Home that these models are amplified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) scientific reports and guide decision-makers’ policies across the world.

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“The models currently are asking so much more of India and South Africa than they are of Canada and France and that’s a problem”, he said.

What are these models?

To work out how to limit global warming to 1.5C, academics make integrated assessment models (Iams). They use formulas and spreadsheets to model factors like how much forest must be saved, how quickly cars must become electric and how fast use of different fossil fuels must drop.

The IPCC takes these models and puts them in its regular reports, which are then signed-off by governments. With this stamp of approval from governments and scientists, the findings of these reports become benchmarks for decision-makers across the world.

Muttitt, who worked with University College London-based modellers on the study, said that estimates tend to be based in rich nations and to therefore have subconscious biases.

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Modellers based in the UK, he said, will be aware of the factors limiting how fast polluting vehicles can be replaced with electric ones. “You will be more sensitised to that than you will the difficulties of closing down a coal power plant in India,” he adds.

What do the models say about coal?

Last year, the IPCC published a report based on the models, concluding that to limit global warming to 1.5C coal use should fall by nearly three-quarters between 2020 and 2030 while oil and gas use goes down by around a tenth.

The modelled transition away from coal is even faster in the power system. The IPCC says coal use for electricity should fall 88% between 2020 and 2030.

Muttitt’s study compared this scenario with previous rapid energy transitions like South Korea’s move away from oil after the 1973 Opec crisis and the USA’s transition away from coal during its 2010s boom in home-grown fracked gas, but results were not realistic.

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He found that, to reach an 88% fall, coal-reliant nations like China, India and South Africa would have to move off the fossil fuel twice as fast as the previous world records, relative to the size of their energy systems.

“This raises questions about socio-political feasibility,” the study says. It adds that coal phase-out dates of 2030 for wealthy countries and 2050 for developing ones are better targets as they are “difficult but possible”.

What limits the speed of coal phase-out?

Coal tends to be dug up and burned for power in geographically concentrated areas, where the fuel happens to be abundant. The communities in these areas come to rely on coal for their local economy.

Environmentalists in South Africa’s coal heartland told Climate Home recently that coal “is the backbone of our economy” and so, despite their concern for climate change, they were wary of a rushed, unfair transition away from the fuel.

Avantika Goswami, the climate change lead at Indian think-tank the Centre for Science and Environment, said renewables must be paired with grid-scale battery storage and that “currently grid-scale battery storage can’t compete yet with coal-based power in terms of cost”.

She added that, for developing countries, borrowing money to invest in renewables is more expensive than for richer nations.

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But Pieter de Pous, head of E3G’s fossil fuel transition programme, said that emerging economies could break previous records. “Lets not rule out the [Global] South being able to go faster than anyone thinks is conceivable”, he said.

He said that Europe’s experience is there is no trade-off between a fast transition away from coal and a fair one. Spain and Portugal had phased coal out fast while looking after coal communities, he said.

IPCC author Joeri Rogelj agreed that the transition could happen faster than previous examples “because there is a fundamental difference dynamic between accidental emissions reductions in the past that happened as a side effect of societal disaster and disruption, and targeted policy driven emissions reductions that set out a positive development path over multiple decades”.

He added: “The same differences exist for the pace of technology phase-outs and therefore require careful consideration.”

What do models say about oil and gas?

If coal is phased out slower than the IPCC envisions then oil and gas will have to be phased out faster to meet the 1.5C target. Muttitt suggests oil and gas should be phased out 50% faster than the IPCC’s figures propose.

This would place more responsibility on rich nations like the US and Europe. In particular, the use of oil to power cars, trucks and ships would have to fall particularly fast.

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“The pace of oil and gas phase out is very gentle in these models,” said Muttitt, “and it’s very gentle because a lot of the work of emissions reduction is done by phasing out coal”.

Only a handful of nations have promised to stop producing oil and gas. At Cop27, a group of producers including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia blocked a commitment to phase out all fossil fuels.

Why are models important?

It’s hard to prove a link between these models and real-world decisions but climate policy, particulary in rich countries, has prioritised global reductions in coal use over oil and gas.

In climate talks, coal has been singled out. As Cop26 hosts, the UK said the summit was about “coal, cars, cash and trees”. At the summit, governments committed to phasing down coal use but did not mention oil or gas.

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Many big and wealthy nations, multilateral development banks and private banks ended finance for overseas coal before they ended it for oil and gas. China, Japan and South Korea all announced in 2021 they would end support for overseas coal but have yet to extend this to oil and gas.

Only a handful of nations have joined an initative, led by Denmark and Costa Rica, to end oil and gas production.

This article was updated on 20th February to include Joeri Rogelj’s comments.

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Set up with $340 million of philanthropic funding, the Global Methane Hub will offer grants and technical support to implement the Global Methane Pledge.

Launched by the US and EU at Cop26 climate talks in November, 110 countries have signed up to the pledge to date, committing to collectively reduce their methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. That is roughly in line with what is needed to keep a 1.5C warming limit within reach, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report on Monday.

Marcelo Mena, the former environment minister of Chile and director of the Climate Action Center at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, will lead the hub.

The first $10 million of funds is earmarked for the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), which will work with 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans over the next three years to achieve the 2030 target.

“We’ll be helping all countries who’d like to develop national methane reduction plans, sharing the scientific, technical and regulatory expertise,” Drew Shindell, CCAC’s special advisor for action on methane, told Climate Home News. 

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Methane contributes significantly to global warming. Although it only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. 

A paper in Environmental Research Letters last year found an all-out, rapid effort to slash methane emissions could slow the rate of current warming by 30% and avoid 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. 

Tackling methane provides a “short-term climate win,” Shindell said. “Actions to reduce it can rapidly slow warming whereas decarbonisation provides needed long-term, but not near-term, climate relief.”

The aim is for all these countries to set specific methane targets in their national climate plans, in updates ahead of Cop27 in Egypt this year, Mena told Climate Home News. 

“The quick wins are in the oil and gas sector,” Mena said, while emissions from farming and waste also need attention.

The oil and gas industry could achieve a 75% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 using existing technology, according to the International Energy Agency. And it need not be expensive: the IPCC estimates 50-80% of methane emissions from fossil fuel operations could be slashed at a cost of less than $50 per tonne of CO2 equivalent.

“Inaction on methane is not a technology or science problem, it is very much a political and organisational problem,” said energy analyst Poppy Kalesi. 

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Rubbish tips are an enormous problem and must be addressed, Mena said. Satellite images show that landfill sites in the US have been leaking methane at rates as much as six times higher than estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

The other major source of methane emissions, responsible for almost 40%, is farming. A cow produces an average of 250-500 litres of methane a day from digesting grass.

The IPCC report said that behaviour and lifestyle changes, such as reducing meat consumption and shifting to plant-based diets, are an important part of the solution. 

“We have a food system that is not healthy for people or the planet,” said Mena. “We need to build the groundwork for transformational change in our food system.” 

Better livestock manure management and changing the diet of livestock could help curb methane emissions from agriculture. There are a host of methane-busting products being trialed, ranging from laboratory-made probiotics to natural additives such as seaweed and charcoal.

Research from the University of California, Davis, for example, has found that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduced the amount of methane from their burps and farts.

“We need to tackle the neglected sectors of waste management and the food system to reduce methane emissions,” said Mena. 

The post Global hub launched to help countries slash methane emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report has a new emphasis on “maladaptation”, when measures taken to adapt to the effects of climate change cause more problems than they solve.

While seawalls do protect coastal properties and beaches, they are expensive, damage wildlife, mainly benefit the rich and encourage risky building near the coast.

Experts around the world told Climate Home News that green buffers like mangroves are generally a better way of dealing with sea level rise than hard infrastructure like seawalls and levees, although they are not suitable for every location.

Melanie Bishop is an associate professor of marine ecology at Australia’s Macquarie University. “Hard engineering structures, such as seawalls, have historically been the primary approach to coastal hazard reduction,” she said.

“While these structures have in many instances effectively protected coastal assets from erosion and inundation, their use has come at considerable cost – not only in economic terms, but also environmentally and socially.”

Revealed: How rich and at-risk nations fought over science of climate impacts

A near-final version of the report summary, drafted by scientists and seen by Climate Home News, said that “seawalls reduce impacts to people and assets in the short-term but can result in lock-ins and increase exposure to climate risks in the long-term”.

After government representatives had their say during the approval plenary, this criticism was softened and the advantages of seawalls emphasised. The caveat “unless they are integrated into a long-term adaptive plan” was added into the final version and the word “effectively” was added before “reduce”.

Seawalls are also “inflexible and/or expensive to change,” the summary concluded.

Two sources with knowledge of the talks told Climate Home that European countries emphasised the benefits of nature-based solutions while India, China and small island states argued that all adaptation options should be on the table.

IPCC: Five takeaways from the UN’s 2022 climate impacts report

Seawalls’ price tags have sparked debates around the world over what should be protected and who should pay for it.

In California, tech companies like Google and Facebook have bought billions of dollars of properties next to San Francisco Bay. Due to sea level rise, the area is vulnerable to flooding during a storm surge.

To build a levee, Facebook will pay $7.8 million, while the nearby low-income community of East Palo Alto is chipping in $5.5 million, 13% of its annual budget.

Mark Lubell is an environmental science professor at the University of California. He told Climate Home: “There are equity and environmental justice issues. Seawalls are expensive. Poor communities with people of color have a harder time affording them, and poor communities in the Bay Area (and most parts of the world) are more vulnerable to sea level rise.”

US seeks to remove ‘losses and damages’ from scientific report

Due to their cost, seawalls are less common in the developing world. Anoka Abeyratne, director of Sri Lankan environmental consultancy Aayusha Global, said most of Sri Lanka’s seawalls are “not the type of large scale ones used in the US”.

She added: “Most are rudimentary with just rocks held together with wire mesh. These are used to save the sandy beaches from washing away.”

Unlike the 36-page summary for policymakers, the full 3,675-page report is not subject to line-by-line approval from governments.

It highlights seawalls’ ecological as well as economic cost, saying they “reduce the space available for coastal ecosystems”.

A sea turtle grazes on seagrass (Photo: P Lindgren/Wikimedia)

Walls on beaches can block animals like turtles off from reaching parts of the beach. According to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, turtles are forced to lay eggs nearer the water where their eggs are more likely to be washed out to sea.

Nature-based solutions like mangroves are a cheaper and greener way of blocking storm surges as they suck in carbon and provide a habitat for wildlife. However, planting mangroves is not always possible, particularly in urban areas.

Retreat from the sea is also an option. The report notes that the Fijian coastal community of Vunidogoloa collectively relocated to another site within their customary land.

But the report warns: “The availability of customary land for the new site was a key factor of success in this relocation example, although this will not guarantee success in every case as relocation may expose communities to new risks.”

Mangroves on Indonesia’s Papua island (Photo: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace)

David Smith is a Jamaican coastal engineer working for Smith Warner International. He told Climate Home that, for many Carribean and other small islands, there is nowhere to retreat to.

In Barbados, he said, all the businesses and homes are by the coast. “Once you go into the mountains, they’re subject to landslides and much more difficult conditions for construction”, he added.

Smith said that many engineers are looking at combinations of green and grey infrastructure like a seawall with a belt of mangroves in front of it.

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The community of Ebeye in the Marshall Islands has even less of an opportunity to retreat than in Barbados.

Ebeye is a strip of land around 300 metres wide with the Pacific Ocean on both sides. The Green Climate Fund is contributing $25m towards building a $60m 1.5km-long seawall.

Albon Ishoda, the Marshall Islands ambassador to Fiji and the Pacific Islands, told Climate Home that the IPCC report made valid criticisms of seawalls but that there are no other options for many atoll communities.

A seawall in Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands. (Photo: Genevieve French/Greenpeace)

“Many times, people think we have options lined up,” he said. “The reality is we don’t, unless some benefactors are able to commit hundreds of millions for some hard adaptation that includes relocating people and raising islands, then perhaps seawalls will be the last option. Some of the places that national efforts have mobilized to create sea walls are critical.”

He added: “Sometimes, people think we can simply move inland. The fact is, as atoll nations, many communities rely on underground aquifers for water. Once that source of water is contaminated with salt water, plants and people will struggle to find fresh water for drinking.”

The post Scientists warn seawalls can make rising waters worse in the long run appeared first on Climate Home News.

In its first report on climate impacts since 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says some impacts are already “irreversible” and that 3.3-3.6 billion people live in “contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change” – a total that is projected to rise.

The report notes there is “very high confidence” that climate change has adversely affected the mental health of people in assessed regions. 

Mental health challenges, including anxiety, stress and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are predicted to increase as temperatures continue to rise and people experience more extreme weather events, the IPCC scientists said. Children, adolescents, elderly people and those with underlying health conditions are particularly vulnerable to mental health risks associated with climate change. 

“It is a huge step that we see mental health mentioned for the first time in the most influential report on climate change,” Gesche Huebner, lecturer in sustainable and healthy built environments at University College London, told Climate Home News. “Climate change is the biggest mental health threat in the decades to come,” she said. 

UN report shows us human costs of climate failure 

Scientists expressed “high confidence” that there is an association between high temperatures and worsening mental health. Mental health outcomes associated with high temperatures include suicide, psychiatric hospital admissions, and experiences of anxiety, depression and acute stress. 

“There is a lot of research linking higher temperatures to psychiatric admissions, but we need more evidence for the causal mechanisms,” Susan Clayton, one of the lead authors of the health chapter in the IPCC report and professor of psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio, told Climate Home News. “We don’t yet have good data to say what the exact link is.”

According to a report by Imperial College’s Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, people with a pre-existing mental illness, particularly psychosis, have a two to three times higher risk of death during heatwaves than people without.

Hotter temperatures can impact blood flow, affect how well medication works, worsen sleep and increase conflict in society. These factors all increase mental health risks, Emma Lawrance, co-author of the report and a mental health innovations fellow at Imperial College London, told Climate Home News. 

Exposure to extreme weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, can lead to a wide range of mental health problems, including depression and PTSD, according to the IPCC report. “[These events] are often very stressful and traumatic, [resulting] in ongoing changes to communities and forcing people to move from their homes,” said Lawrance. 

For every one person affected physically during a disaster, 40 people are affected psychologically, according to the Grantham Institute report. 

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To help people cope in the aftermath of an extreme event, countries should invest in providing “psychological first aid” and bolstering emotional resilience within vulnerable communities, said Clayton. “People who are not mental health professionals can be trained to provide that.” Investing in physical infrastructure, such as emergency shelters, can also help people feel safer and “better mentally” ahead of an event hitting, she said. 

According to the IPCC report, there is less scientific evidence that anxiety about the climate crisis, also known as solastalgia, leads to an increase in mental health problems. 

“There is lots of evidence that people are concerned, worried and fearful about climate change, but does it affect their mental health? Just being anxious about climate does not mean you have a mental illness,” said Clayton. 

While the research focus on the topic has increased in the western world, there are major data gaps across Africa, Asia and South America – regions where many communities are highly vulnerable to extreme weather. In many countries, mental illness is stigmatised and suicides may not be logged, said Huebner. “That is a huge issue… It will take quite some time to overcome this. It is really important to work with the countries in question on this.” 

The post IPCC report spotlights mental health impacts of climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

The IPCC found methane levels in the air are now higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years and are tracking close to the high emission scenarios outlined in its previous assessment in 2013.

Although the gas only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane, which is mainly released from abandoned coal mines, farming and oil and gas operations, has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. It is responsible for almost a quarter of global warming.

“Strong, rapid and sustained reductions” in methane emissions are needed in addition to slashing CO2 in the next two decades, scientists concluded, to keep a 1.5C warming limit within reach – the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.

“The new IPCC report is a call for action on methane,” Daniel Zavala-Araiza, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund, told Climate Home News. “Hopefully Cop26 will show that methane is becoming a key priority at both national and sub-national level,” referring to the climate summit in Glasgow, UK this November.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma has methane on his list of issues to address at the summit. But more recently UK prime minister Boris Johnson boiled down the priorities to “coal, cars, cash and trees,” suggesting it may not be top of the agenda.

Five takeaways from the IPCC’s 2021 climate science report

A lack of effective policy to tackle methane stems from patchy monitoring and reporting. “Measuring methane is still a work in progress and far from global practice,” energy analyst Poppy Kalesi told Climate Home News.

Many governments and companies see methane gas as a “transition fuel” away from coal, as it emits less CO2 when burned for power generation or heating. Yet methane leaks in the process risk undermining that carbon saving.

Recent studies have shown that methane emissions from oil and gas production are often much higher than previously assumed. An investigation by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) earlier this year found that methane leakage from oil and gas infrastructure across Europe was endemic.

Proper maintenance and plumbing of oil and gas pipelines to prevent leaks is needed to curb methane emissions, Sarah Smith, programme director of super pollutants at CATF, told Climate Home News.

“Since methane is the only clear strategy to substantially cut warming over the next 20 years, world leaders must come together and pledge swift and sizeable reductions. This is an opportunity that can’t be missed,” said Smith.

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A paper in Environmental Research Letters earlier this year found an all-out, rapid effort to slash methane emissions could slow the rate of current warming by 30% and avoid 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. 

The oil and gas industry could achieve a 75% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 using existing technology, according to the International Energy Agency. 

The other major source of methane emissions, responsible for almost 40%, is farming. 

Preventing the burning of crop residues, better livestock manure management and changing the diet of livestock could help curb methane emissions from agriculture, according to Smith.

Cows produce an average of 250-500 litres of methane a day from digesting grass. Research from the University of California, Davis, found that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduced the amount of methane from their burps and farts. A more contentious solution is for meat eaters to adopt plant-based diets.

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According to analysis by CATF, most countries refer to methane in their climate plans, but just 13 countries have included methane reduction targets in their latest pledges to the Paris Agreement.

Nigeria has committed to ending emissions from gas flaring, which outstrip all emissions from transport and electricity, by 2030 in its updated climate plan. 

The European Commission has developed a methane strategy, proposing laws to require companies to monitor methane emissions and report and repair leaks.

In March, the EU and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) to monitor companies’ emissions using company data, satellite technology and scientific studies.

“Oil and gas methane is the cheapest and easiest to abate and European states are major purchasers globally. The EU could set a standard for the rest of the world to follow while cheaply addressing a major source of warming now,” Jill Duggan, executive director of EDF Europe, told Climate Home News.

Kalesi said that meaningful EU action on methane is unlikely to kick in before 2027 due to the legislation timeline and a lack of satellite data. “If legislation is adopted in 2023, it will take a couple of years before member states’ authorities are able to implement and enforce [regulations],” she said.

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In the US, political swings have delayed progress. Former president Barack Obama introduced methane regulations, only for Donald Trump to roll them back. President Joe Biden has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to reinstate the rules by September. 

Some campaigners and politicians have called for a global agreement on methane, similar to the Montreal Protocol which was drawn up in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting substances.

But Kalesi said that it is more difficult to build support for methane reduction. The ozone issue was “emotional, [but] methane remains a very technical, scientific issue,” she said. “The human dynamic element is completely missing. Science in and of itself hardly ever brings change.”

The post IPCC report prompts calls to tackle methane emissions at Cop26 appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is the first scientific review since 2013 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) started its last round of assessment reports, AR5.

Assessment reports come in groups of three. This first one outlines the projected impacts of five emissions scenarios, which range from global net negative and net zero to emissions doubling by 2050 and 2100, compared to current levels.

The second and third reports, due to land in early 2022, will look at how to adapt to these impacts and how to prevent the worst case scenarios.

Here we round up five key messages from this landmark report.

1. We are set to pass 1.5C warming by 2040

The warming of recent decades has not been seen for millennia, is happening rapidly and almost everywhere on earth and has reversed a long-term global cooling trend. We need to go back around 125,000 years to find evidence of warmer global surface temperatures, spanning multiple centuries.

That leaves an increasingly narrow pathway to stabilising temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.

Under all emissions scenarios outlined in the IPCC report, the earth’s surface warming is projected to reach 1.5C or 1.6C in the next two decades.

The threshold has come closer partly because scientists have incorporated new datasets in their estimate of historic temperature rise, including from the fast-warming Arctic. That adds 0.1C to the estimate of historic warming. High global emissions since the last assessment reports are continuing that trend.

For any chance of meeting the goal seen as essential to the survival of some vulnerable communities and ecosystems, drastic reductions in CO2 would be needed this decade and net zero emissions by 2050.

2. Human activity is driving extreme weather

While AR5 concluded that human influence on the climate system is “clear”,  AR6 said there is “high confidence” that human activities are the main drivers of more frequent or intense heatwaves, glaciers melting, ocean warming and acidification. 

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” the report concludes. 

There have been enormous developments in attribution science since the last IPCC report. With enhanced models, scientists are now able to quantify how much more likely or intense extreme weather events were because of climate change.

Recent studies have shown that the Siberian heat wave in 2020 and extreme heat across Asia in 2016 would never have happened without humans burning fossil fuels. 

“There has been a real push linking extreme events to societal impacts,” said Dann Mitchell, professor of climate change at Bristol University, citing a 2016 study which found that 506 of the 753 fatalities during the Paris heatwave in 2003 could be blamed on climate change.

Timeline: How the science linking climate change to extreme weather took off

3. We know more about regional climate impacts

Climate models have improved since the last IPCC report, enabling scientists to analyse current and projected temperature and hydrological extremes at a regional level and understand what global climate impacts will look like in different parts of the world. 

Modelling shows that the Arctic is warming faster than other regions and that high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere are projected to warm by two to four times the level of global warming. While warming in the tropics is slower, it is noticeable because temperatures over land near the equator do not vary much year on year in the absence of human influence.

The Gulf Stream is very likely to weaken over the century, according to the report. A complete collapse of the Atlantic Ocean current would disrupt regional weather patterns, weakening African and Asian monsoons and strengthening dry spells in Europe, scientists warn.

“The climate models have improved since the last report, they have higher spatial resolution which allows you to see more regional impacts and they are better at simulating what will happen in the future in specific regions,” Stephen Cornelius, the IPCC lead for WWF, told Climate Home News.

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4. We are closer to irreversible tipping points 

An aerial view of Greenland’s melting ice sheets. (Photo: NASA/Goddard/Maria-José Viñas/Flickr)

The report sounds the alarm about the possibility of irreversible changes to the climate, often called tipping points.

For example, forests could start to die as temperatures rise, becoming less able to absorb carbon dioxide, leading to further warming. Or Antarctic ice sheets could become destabilised, leading to rapid sea level rise.

“The probability of low-likelihood, high impact outcomes increases with higher global warming levels,” the report notes. “Abrupt responses and tipping points of the climate system, such as strongly increased Antarctic ice sheet melt and forest dieback, cannot be ruled out.” 

The melting of Antarctic ice sheets could cause sea levels to rise more than a metre by 2100 and 15 metres by 2500.

“We are now observing climate change with our own eyes in ways we did not do so before. Many temperature extremes are outside the bounds of natural variability and triggering extreme events, such as wildfires,” said Corinne Le Quere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, at a briefing last month.

The “substantial increase in risks” was highlighted in recent analysis which showed that parts of the Amazon are now emitting more carbon than they absorb, Emily Shuckburgh, a University of Cambridge climate scientist, said at the briefing.

5. Methane emissions are an important lever

For the first time, the IPCC has dedicated an entire chapter to “short-lived climate forcers” such as aerosols, particulate matter and methane. 

Methane levels are now higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years and are well above the safe limits outlined in AR5. Methane, which is released into the atmosphere from abandoned coal mines, farming and oil and gas operations, has a global warming impact 84 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year period. It is responsible for almost a quarter of global warming. 

Ecosystem responses to global warming, such as thawing permafrost and wildfires, are highly likely to further increase concentrations of methane in the atmosphere. 

The authors state that a strong and rapid reduction in methane emissions would not only curb global warming but also improve air quality.

Despite its global warming impact, methane has received far less attention than CO2 and is not included in most countries’ climate pledges.

“A sharp reduction in methane would give you a short-term win, but it has largely been ignored by governments to date, all the focus has been on CO2 net zero targets,” said Richard Black, senior associate at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

The post Five takeaways from the IPCC’s 2021 climate science report appeared first on Climate Home News.

It will be the first comprehensive review of the scientific literature since 2013, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) started its last round of assessment reports, AR5.

Attribution science, which looks at how much human activities lead to climate change, is likely to feature heavily in the report. Here we give an overview of the scientific developments of the past eight years.

AR5 concluded that human influence on the climate system is “clear.” Today scientists say climate change is, without doubt, caused by us. A 2021 study concluded that humans have caused all of the warming observed since the preindustrial period.

Since the last IPCC report, there has been an explosion of attribution studies finding that specific heatwaves, droughts, tropical cyclones and other extreme events were more likely or intense because of climate change. Recent studies have shown that extreme events such as the Siberian heat wave in 2020 would never have happened without humans pumping greenhouse gases into the air.

Since AR5, attribution science has become more “impact-oriented”, Sjoukje Philip, a climate scientist from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, told Climate Home News.

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That means more studies focusing on the societal impacts of extreme weather events, such as the 2016 study which found that 506 of the 753 fatalities during the Paris heatwave in 2003 were a result of climate change. 

“We wanted to see how much human-induced climate change contributed to mortality,” Dann Mitchell, one of the study’s authors and professor of climate change at Bristol University, told Climate Home News. “Since the last IPCC report models have become more advanced and we have better ways of collecting climate and health data,” he said. 

The increase in attribution studies is due to more precise climate models and peer-reviewed methods which allow scientists to rapidly and accurately analyse extreme events, according to Philip. This also helps with communication. “If you can do the attribution one week after the event, it’s still news,” she said.

Scientists are now able to carry out attribution studies within a few days of an event occurring. In some cases they can do the analysis while the event is still going on. Scientists from the WWA group published a study in 2018 showing that climate change made Europe’s heatwave twice as likely, while it was ongoing.

Half of all attribution studies focus on heatwaves, according to Mitchell. Heatwaves are relatively easy to attribute because they are “very certain and the first response to climate change” and cover a large area, which makes it easier for climate models to pick up, said Mitchell. Most of the rest look at extremes of rainfall leading to drought or floods.

Only a handful have looked at hurricanes, which are hard to model due to their complexity and limited historical data. They reached relatively weak conclusions about the scale of human influence.

That could change as new high-resolution models are being developed, said Sarah Teuling-Kew, a climate scientist at WWA. “Methods for large-scale precipitation and temperature extremes are more robust – they have been put through the tests,” she said.

The majority of attribution studies focus on events in Europe and North America. This is because these regions have the most reliable climate data available, according to Philip. “I don’t think we’ve ever done a heatwave attribution study over Africa because we never hear about it,” she said, adding that WWA scientists are collaborating with African scientists and sharing knowledge to improve modelling of the continent.

The post Timeline: How the science linking climate change to extreme weather took off appeared first on Climate Home News.

While part of the brief was to identify barriers to climate action, critics say there is little space given to the obstructive role of fossil fuel lobbying – and that’s a problem.

Robert Brulle, an American sociologist who has long studied institutions that promote climate denial, likened it to “trying to tell the story of Star Wars, but omitting Darth Vader”.

Tweeting in November, Brulle explained he declined an invitation to contribute to the working group three (WG3) report. “It became clear to me that institutionalized efforts to obstruct climate action was a peripheral concern. So I didn’t consider it worth engaging in this effort. It really deserves its own chapter & mention in the summary.”

In an email exchange with Climate Home News, Brulle expressed a hope the final version would nonetheless reflect his feedback. The significance of obstruction efforts should be reflected in the summary for policymakers and not “buried in an obscure part of the report,” he wrote.

His tweet sparked a lively conversation among scientists, with several supporting his concerns and others defending the IPCC, which aims to give policymakers an overview of the scientific consensus.

David Keith, a Harvard researcher into solar geoengineering, agreed the IPCC “tells a bloodless story, and abstract numb version of the sharp political conflict that will shape climate action”.

Social ecology and ecological economics professor Julia Steinberger, a lead author on WG3, said “there is a lot of self-censorship” within the IPCC. Where authors identify enemies of climate action, like fossil fuel companies, that content is “immediately flagged as political or normative or policy-prescriptive”.

The next set of reports is likely to be “a bit better” at covering the issue than previous efforts, Steinberger added, “but mainly because the world and outside publications have overwhelmingly moved past this, and the IPCC is catching up: not because the IPCC is leading.”

Next UN climate science report to consider lessons from coronavirus

Politics professor Matthew Paterson was a lead author on WG3 for the previous round of assessment reports, published in 2014. He told Climate Home that Brulle is “broadly right” lobbying hasn’t been given enough attention although there is a “decent chunk” in the latest draft on corporations fighting for their interests and slowing down climate action.

Paterson said this was partly because the expertise of authors didn’t cover fossil fuel company lobbying and partly because governments would oppose giving the subject greater prominence. “Not just Saudi Arabia,” he said. “They object to everything. But the Americans [and others too]”.

While the IPCC reports are produced by scientists, government representatives negotiate the initial scope and have some influence over how the evidence is summarised before approving them for publication. “There was definitely always a certain adaptation – or an internalised sense of what governments are and aren’t going to accept – in the report,” said Paterson.

The last WG3 report in 2014 was nearly 1,500 pages long. Lobbying was not mentioned in its 32-page ‘summary for policymakers’ but lobbying against carbon taxes is mentioned a few times in the full report.

On page 1,184, the report says some companies “promoted climate scepticism by providing financial resources to like-minded think-tanks and politicians”. The report immediately balances this by saying “other fossil fuel companies adopted a more supportive position on climate science”.

Comment: 10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted

One of the co-chairs of WG3, Jim Skea, rejected the criticisms as “completely unfair”. He told Climate Home News: “The IPCC produces reports very slowly because the whole cycle lasts seven years… we can’t respond on a 24/7 news cycle basis to ideas that come up.”

Skea noted there was a chapter on policies and institutions in the 2014 report which covered lobbying from industry and from green campaigners and their influence on climate policy. “The volume of climate change mitigation literature that comes out every year is huge and I would say that the number of references to articles which talk about lobbying of all kinds – including industrial lobbying and whether people had known about the science – it is in there and about the right proportions”, he said.

“We’re not an advocacy organisation, we’re a scientific organisation, it’s not our job to take up arms and take one side or another” he said. “That’s the strength of the IPCC. If if oversteps its role, it will weaken its influence” and “undermine the scientific statements it makes”.

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A broader, long-running criticism of the IPCC is that it downplays subjects like political science, development studies, sociology and anthropology and over-relies on economists and the people who put together ‘integrated assessment models’ (IAMs), which attempt to answer big questions like how the world can keep to 1.5C of global warming.

Paterson said the IPCC is “largely dominated by large-scale modellers or economists and the representations of others sorts of social scientists’ expertise is very thin”. A report he co-authored on the social make-up of that IPCC working group found that nearly half the authors were engineers or economists but just 15% were from social sciences other than economics. This dominance was sharper among the more powerful authors. Of the 35 Contributing Lead Authors, 20 were economists or engineers,  there was one each from political science, geography and law and none from the humanities.

Wim Carton, a lecturer in the political economy of climate change mitigation at Lund University, said that the IPCC (and scientific research in general) has been caught up in “adulation” of IAMs and this has led to “narrow techno-economic conceptualisations of future mitigation pathways”.

Skea said that there has been lots of material on political science and international relations and even “quite a bit” on moral philosophy. He told Climate Home: “It’s not the case that IPCC is only economics and modelling. Frankly, a lot of that catches attention because these macro numbers are eye-catching. There’s a big difference in the emphasis in [media] coverage of IPCC reports and the balance of materials when you go into the reports themselves.”

According to Skea’s calculations, the big models make up only 6% of the report contents, about a quarter of the summary and the majority of the press coverage. “But there’s an awful lot of bread-and-butter material in IPCC reports which is just about how you get on with it,” he added. “It’s not sexy material but it’s just as important because that’s what needs to be done to mitigate climate change.”

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While saying their dominance had been amplified by the media, Skea defended the usefulness of IAMs. “Our audience are governments. Their big question is how you connect all this human activity with actual impacts on the climate. It’s very difficult to make that leap without actually modelling it. You can’t do it with lots of little micro-studies. You need models and you need scenarios to think your way through that connection.”

The IPCC has also been accused of placing too much faith in negative emissions technologies and geo-engineering. Carton calls these technologies ‘carbon unicorns’ because he says they “do not exist at any meaningful scale” and probably never will.

In a recent book chapter, Carton argues: “If one is to believe recent IPCC reports, then gone are the days when the world could resolve the climate crisis merely by reducing emissions. Avoiding global warming in excess of 2°C/1.5°C now also involves a rather more interventionist enterprise: to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, amounts that only increase the longer emissions refuse to fall.”

When asked about carbon capture technologies, Skea said that in terms of deployment, “they haven’t moved on very much” since the last big IPCC report in 2014. He added that carbon capture and storage and bio-energy are “all things that have been done commercially somewhere in the world.”

“What has never been done”, he said, “is to connect the different parts of the system together and run them over all. That’s led many people looking at the literature to conclude that the main barriers to the adoption of some technologies are the lack of policy incentives and the lack of working out good business models to put what would be complex supply chains together – rather than anything that’s standing in the way technically.”

The next set of three IPCC assessment reports was originally due to be published in 2021, but work was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Governments and experts will have from 18 January to 14 March to read and comment on the draft for WG3. Dates for a final government review have yet to be set.

The post ‘Star Wars without Darth Vader’ – why the UN climate science story names no villains appeared first on Climate Home News.

Covid-19, which has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide, is thought to have originated in animals, perhaps bats, before infecting people in Wuhan, China.

Global warming, a rising human population, pollution and destruction of wildlife habitats are among the factors raising the risk of such zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans.

Zoonotic disease was mentioned in the last round-up of scientific knowledge by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013-14, but the pandemic potential was not a focus.

That will change in its next assessment report, due to be published in stages over 2021-22 as the main scientific guide for government action on global warming. Each section is likely to be delayed by a few months, IPCC scientists say.

“Pushing wildlife out of natural habitats, high density living and closer interactions between animals and humans… are a risky cocktail,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Climate Home News.

Coronavirus: plane-free skies spur research into warming impact of aviation

In an Earth Day presentation on 22 April, he noted a study finding that 96% of the weight of all living mammals are people and domesticated animals such as chickens and cows, with just 4% made up of wild creatures.

Many researchers reckon that human activities have become the overwhelming force of change on the planet, and qualify for a new geological epoch dubbed the Anthropocene, based on the Greek word “anthropos”,  meaning “man”. It would succeed the current Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,700 years ago.

“This is a manifestation of the Anthropocene,” said Rockström of the coronavirus pandemic.

IPCC scientists say it is urgent to find out how far humans can influence the planet before ecosystems collapse, such as tropical coral reefs that are bleaching and dying in warming waters.

“Humans are exploiting natural resources and the world up to its limits. Knowing those limits would be very, very important. It’s a matter of survival,” Hans-Otto Pörtner, of the Alfred Wegener Institute and co-chair of the IPCC working group on the impacts of climate change,  told Climate Home News.

Climate activists form new tactics and alliances amid coronavirus lockdown

Before the coronavirus, the IPCC had already planned to explore links between climate change and biodiversity by holding a first joint workshop, in May, with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

That event will be delayed by several months, Pörtner said. More scientists were starting to look into the links between biodiversity, climate change and coronavirus and early findings will be included in the next IPCC report.

“There are similarities between the crises [of coronavirus and climate change] in the need for science-based policies – you see the same politicians failing on this [pandemic] as they are failing on the climate side,” Pörtner told CHN. “We need policymakers who have an understanding of the risks.”

He declined to single out any governments for criticism. IPCC scientists consulted for this article gave their personal views, not those of the IPCC.

The IPCC assessment report in 2014 had a chapter on health and climate change. It outlined health threats from heat waves and deadly wildfires, malnutrition because of less food production in poor regions and diseases such as malaria and dengue spread by mosquitoes expanding their ranges.

The publication of the first part of the next IPCC report looking at the physical science of climate change, including scenarios for future warming, is likely to be delayed by about 3 months from April 2021, said co-chair Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climatologist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

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She and Pörtner paid tribute to IPCC scientists who are continuing work despite lacking access to laboratories or field work as countries are put under lockdown. Particularly in developing nations, many struggle with weak internet links and face extra stresses in taking part – IPCC work is prestigious but unpaid.

Masson-Delmotte said the world needed to find ways to plan for the future even when there was “deep uncertainty”, a phrase used in past IPCC reports about how, for instance, to predict the future of Antarctic ice beyond 2100. A major collapse of the ice sheet would raise global sea levels by several metres.

“A clear lesson from the pandemic is that there is a global failure in preparedness, and planning for managing a known risk,” she said.

The response to the pandemic could also inform efforts to cut emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to fall around 6% in 2020, as non-essential work and travel is put on hold to slow the spread of Covid-19. The UN estimates that emissions will have to fall 7.6% a year over the coming decade to limit temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, the tougher target in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

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A week before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets in Incheon, South Korea, to finalise the UN report, the Observer accused its authors of censoring results to appease countries like Saudi Arabia, the US and Australia.

The claim centres on warnings that were cut between drafts of the summary for policymakers, which digests a huge body of research. As Climate Home News’ analysis of the final government draft dated 4 June shows, other messages were strengthened or clarified in the process.

Myles Allen, a lead coordinating author of the summary for policymakers, said it was “offensive” to suggest scientists did what governments told them.

“It is painted as governments bullying scientists. It is demeaning to the governments, because it suggests they act unethically, and it is demeaning to the scientists, because it suggests we can be bullied,” he told Climate Home News on the sidelines of a conference in Oxford.

“Governments are asking for clarifications and pointing out where there is scope for misunderstanding of what has been said… It is actually a constructive process,” he said.

Leaked final government draft of UN 1.5C climate report – annotated

Others rebutted the story on Twitter. “Drafts & comments will be publicly available so these claims will be testable. I doubt there’s downplaying due to political pressure,” wrote Richard Betts, professor of climate impacts at the University of Exeter and Met Office Hadley Centre who was a reviewer on the early drafts.

“Authors any [sic] many countries work hard to achieve fair balance,” tweeted Piers Forster, climate physicist at the Priestley Centre, adding: “A lot of potential impacts maybe real but have limited evidence behind them. Need to evaluate them for full picture of risk but should be clear where impacts are more robust and known.”

The special report on 1.5C pulls together available evidence on the stretch target in the Paris Agreement. The summary leaked in June found that 1.5C of global warming was significantly safer for humanity than the 2C upper threshold of ambition.

It is politically sensitive because the tougher target implies much faster cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, which will hurt economies dependent on fossil fuels. Accordingly, green campaigners are wary of governments trying to weaken the conclusions.

What happens in the next few months will impact the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

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“The scientists who produce reports like these try to summarise the latest knowledge, but they have a reputation for being conservative about the worst risks of climate change,” Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute, told the Observer. “This time they have outdone themselves in pulling their punches, however.”

“What Bob thinks [is] skewed others do not,” said Forster.

In closed meetings in Incheon next week, government representatives and scientists will go through the summary for policymakers line by line before agreeing on the final version.

In a statement, the IPCC said the report authors had to address more than 42,000 comments received over three review periods, and incorporate new literature up to the 15 May cut-off date. “All IPCC reports go through several drafts and reviews. It is completely normal for the text of the main report and the Summary for Policymakers to evolve over this process,” the statement said.

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The authors make clear the difference between warming of 1.5C and 2C would be “substantial” and damaging to communities, economies and ecosystems across the world.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement established twin goals to hold temperature rise from pre-industrial times “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has since been working to assess the difference between those targets, with a view to publishing a sweeping analysis of all available research in October this year.

The report summary, which Climate Home News published on Wednesday, is a draft and subject to change. The IPCC said it would not comment on leaked reports. An earlier draft from January was also published by CHN.

CHN has compared the January and June drafts. The new version builds a stronger case for governments to rapidly cut carbon pollution. It also strikes a marginally more optimistic tone on the attainability of the 1.5C target.

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In January, authors said every 0.5C added to today’s level of 1C of warming would “increase” the risks of various impacts. That wording has been beefed up throughout the new summary, which now predicts “substantial increases” in those risks.

Bill Hare, a physicist and CEO of Climate Analytics, said the new draft had made big steps forward in clarifying the difference between the two Paris temperature goals.

“If one looks across many parts of the report there are really very substantial improvements since January,” he said.

Since the first draft was circulated, a number of studies focusing on the differing impacts of 1.5C and 2C warming have been published. New evidence on the impacts on species, the economy, physical systems and invasive pests has been incorporated in the report.

A report released in April allowed the IPCC to predict that at 2C it was “very likely that there will be at least one sea ice free Arctic summer per decade”, whereas this would happen just once per century at 1.5C.

The draft was also changed in line with new research on economic impacts, finding “growth is projected to be lower at 2C than at 1.5C of global warming for many developed and developing countries”.

Leaked: final government draft of UN 1.5C climate report – in full and annotated

The major outstanding question about the 1.5C target is: is it feasible? In the new draft, the scientists write “there is no simple answer”.

On current levels of pollution, the world is warming roughly 0.2C each decade. If that continues, the 1.5C threshold will be crossed in the 2040s, the report says.

However comparison of the drafts reveals a significant increase in the “carbon budget” – the total mass of greenhouse gases that can be emitted before the world will be committed to warming past 1.5C.

The January draft found a maximum of 580 gigatonnes of CO2 would give a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C. In the new draft, that number has been increased by a third to 750GtCO2.

In January, authors wrote scenarios that gave a 66% chance of staying under 1.5C were “already out of reach”. That language has been dropped, although the new draft does not say these higher probabilities are now considered feasible.

A coal power plant in Tianjin, China. Primary energy from coal must be reduced by two thirds by 2030 for 1.5C to be possible, the draft says (Photo: Shubert Ciencia)

CHN asked IPCC authors and scientists not directly involved in the summary to help explain the difference between the budgets. None were willing to comment on the record.

The calculation of carbon budgets relies on assumptions and different approaches produce numbers that vary by “more than 50%”, according to the new draft. That covers a real world set of emissions cuts that range from virtually unachievable to challenging but possible.

The first draft of the special report was released for feedback from researchers in January. After receiving tens of thousands of comments it was revised and on 4 June a new draft was sent to governments for review.

The final government draft summary published on this website contains detailed annotations by CHN reporters on many of the changes made between the first and second drafts of the report.

Both versions of the report find the 1.5C goal requires CO2 emissions from electricity to reach net zero by mid-century.

The second draft adds a note that: “The political, economic, social and technical feasibility of solar energy, wind energy and electricity storage technologies increased over the past few years, signalling that such a system transition in electricity generation may be underway.”

The latest draft summary places more emphasis on efforts to cut emissions before 2030. This mirrors many countries’ pledges to the Paris Agreement, which set emissions targets for that year.

Pressure is growing for these promises to be increased. On Monday, 14 EU countries called on the European Commission’s long term climate strategy, which is under development, to align with the 1.5C limit.

Climate commissioner: EU can increase 2030 pledge to Paris Agreement

The summary elaborates on what a “rapid and far-reaching” transition looks like for different sectors.

Renewables deployment needs to accelerate further for 1.5C to be possible, the draft says, with primary energy from coal falling two thirds by 2030. For comparison, the International Energy Agency forecasts coal use increasing slightly over the period, based on existing and signposted policies.

It calls for sustainable management of competing demands on the land. This includes “diet changes” – code for the rich eating less steak – and “sustainable intensification” of farming, which is viewed with suspicion by many environmentalists.

Radical emissions cuts are also needed in industry, transport and buildings, where it says technology exists but faces economic and social barriers.

The final section deals with sustainable development and how efforts to meet the 1.5C limit interact with goals like eradicating poverty.

In the first summary, the authors warned there was a “high chance” the 1.5C target “might not be feasible” because efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere, through tree-planting or use of carbon capture with biofuels, can conflict with other development priorities and take up land used for food production.

This language has been toned down, instead concluding the feasibility of such methods “depends on scale, [and the] implications for land, water and energy use”.

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What is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C?

The 2015 Paris climate deal outlined two distinct goals:

Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

At the Paris conference, governments also charged the UN’s climate science panel, the IPCC, with producing a report that assessed the difference between these two goals would be, in terms of impacts on human life, the economy and the global environment. That report is due to be published in October.

Our story: Warming of 2C ‘substantially’ more harmful than 1.5C – draft UN report

What is this document?

This is the second draft of the summary for policymakers of the special report on 1.5C.

It has been compiled by climate scientists from around the world. A draft, which was published by Climate Home News in February, was circulated to the scientific community for review earlier this year.

The latest version, dated 4 June, has been sent to governments for comments on the ‘summary for policymakers’ (see below).  The review runs until 29 July.

What is a ‘summary for policymakers’?

The full report, known as the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, will run to hundreds of pages of scientific data and findings. This is shortened set of conclusions and findings drawn from the larger report designed to provide information in a useable way for decision makers. Throughout the text you’ll see references to chapters in the larger report in curved brackets: eg. {2.3,2.5.3}.

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Is this the final version?

No. This is a draft document and subject to change. The findings and recommendations should be read in that context.

After the document has been reviewed by governments, the entire report will go before the IPCC plenary to be approved (or not) by the member states. That final version is due to be released in October.

What are the comments on this document?

While this document is not a finalised or agreement version, it does represent an important progression on earlier drafts. We have summarised some of the changes here. CHN journalists have scoured the two drafts and applied comments where we note significant changes have been made since January.

The drafts were significantly different and cannot be compared line by line, so the comments are where we have noted important differences. Where there are no comments, the text is likely to have retained a similar meaning across both drafts.

In some places, we note language that has been dropped from the summary. Text removed from the summary may still be included in the final version of the full report.

Why is this just a text document?

This is a text-only version of the draft summary. The original, which CHN has seen, contained markings that may have identified sources. The original also contained several graphics, which CHN has chosen not to include as they may also have contained identifying markings.

What does the IPCC say?

The UN climate science body said it would not comment on the ongoing work of preparing the report. But it outlined why it felt releasing or reporting on the draft could undermine the work of the authors.

The IPCC is committed to an open, robust and transparent assessment process. During the review stages, the IPCC actively seeks the collaboration of researchers and practitioners across a broad range of expertise to provide expert comments on the draft reports. As with the normal practice of peer review, this process is designed to ensure that the report is as accurate, comprehensive and objective as possible.

The report undergoes revisions between the first and second order draft, and between the second order draft and the final draft. This is in response to thousands of review comments and also because the authors have assessed new literature that has been accepted for publication since the previous draft and before the final cut-off date.

Draft reports are provided to governments and reviewers as confidential working documents and must not be publicly distributed, quoted or cited. This is out of respect for the authors and to give them the time and space to finish writing before making the work public.

IPCC 1.5C special report – summary for policymakers – draft for government review (Text)

The post Leaked final government draft of UN 1.5C climate report – annotated appeared first on Climate Home News.

Irma has astonished meteorologists with its intensity, maintaining top wind speeds of 185m/h (300km/h) for a world record 37 hours. Outer islanders surveyed the devastation on Friday as Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida prepared to be hit next.

Three thousand kilometres north, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is laying down the outline of its next comprehensive report on the state of climate science, due out in 2021-22.

In a discussion scheduled for Friday, small island states will push to include research on the damages caused by climate change. This topic, known in UN jargon as “loss and damage”, is politically charged as wealthy nations fear it could open them to claims of compensation.

Arthur Rolle, the national representative for the Bahamas, told Climate Home by email from Montreal he had considered staying at home. “My fears for my home is that it will be tested for the first time with a hurricane of strength in excess of 140 miles per hour [225kmph],” he said. Most of his friends and family lived in flood-prone, low-lying areas, he added.

Weather forecasting in the region had “vastly improved” since previous hurricanes, he said, but global warming was worsening the impacts of such storms.

“The IPCC can help small island states understand, manage and prepare for hurricanes by continuing to stress how the increase in global sea surface temperature will increase the intensity of hurricanes and examine further if there is a correlation of increased temperature with frequency.”

#Irma is expected to move through the SE Bahamas today and approach south Florida on Saturday as a dangerous category 4 hurricane pic.twitter.com/83bh2woM43

— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) September 8, 2017

A spokesperson for the IPCC told Climate Home delegates from five Caribbean states were in attendance. Two that pre-registered had not arrived.

Cheryl Jeffers from St Kitts and Nevis decided not to travel, according to contacts from think tank Climate Analytics, which supports island states at UN climate forums. Jeffers could not be reached for comment. The country escaped the worst of Irma, but suffered power cuts and “significant damage” to property and infrastructure, according to the prime minister.

Celso Pazos Alberdi of Cuba’s meteorological institute is understood to have returned home after talks started. Irma is expected to skirt the northern coast of Cuba later on Friday and Saturday, bringing storm surges of up to three metres.

St Lucia’s representative to the UN climate process Valerie Leon was forced to cancel her attendance at a separate climate change meeting in Rabat, Morocco, which started on Thursday.

Hurricane Harvey: lawyers warn of climate lawsuits over damages

Climate change has long been predicted to make tropical storms more destructive, as higher sea surface temperatures fuel faster winds and heavier rainfall.

After Hurricane Harvey unleashed unprecedented flooding on coastal Texas in late August, many climate scientists said the storm already bore fingerprints of global warming.

“Even I as a climate scientist am startled to see another potentially devastating storm in this region so shortly after Harvey,” said Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the physics are very clear: hurricanes get their destructive energy from ocean heat, and currently water surface temperatures in this region are very high.

“Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas raise our planet’s temperatures and provide the energy for ever stronger tropical storms. So climate change is not causing theses storms, but it can worsen their impacts.”

Comment: Island states need better data to manage climate losses

In the Bahamas, around 2,000 residents of southern islands have been ordered to evacuate to the capital Nassau, in anticipation of a direct hit on Friday. Storm surges of up to 6 metres are forecast in some areas.

“There is really just nothing you can do to withstand a category five storm if you are right in its path,” said Adelle Thomas, a senior researcher with Climate Analytics based in Nassau.

As she explained in a recent article for Climate Home, Thomas’s research shows small island states are hit increasingly hard by tropical storms but don’t have robust data to measure the influence of climate change on specific events.

The cost goes beyond the immediate destruction of lives, crops and infrastructure, she told Climate Home by Skype, before the storm reached the Bahamas. The risk also discourages investment in island industries, weakening their economies over the long term.

“What we need from the scientific community is research on loss and damage that is already happening, and loss and damage that can happen. These need to be able to be attributed to climate change,” said Thomas. “It is important for the IPCC to focus on that robust scientific evidence. That will provide a solid basis for pushing this agenda at climate talks.”

Visualization of the impacts of hurricane categories 1 to 5, via @ClimateCentral #Irma #climatechange pic.twitter.com/cp1WAGiGX1

— UN Climate Action (@UNFCCC) September 5, 2017

At UN climate talks, “loss and damage” is a contentious topic. Initially, vulnerable countries demanded compensation from those responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. That approach stalled as developed countries refused to accept liability, forcing negotiators to look for other ways forward.

The word “compensation” is considered politically toxic, as wealthy countries fear setting a precedent for claims against them. But Thomas said that small islands in particular needed some form of support.

Given the global attention the storms have created, the issue may get extra attention at the next round of climate negotiations in November, especially as Pacific island state Fiji holds the presidency.

In January, Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama promised to use his platform to highlight the interests of low-lying and vulnerable nations. However campaigners noted he did not explicitly name loss and damage as a priority and said progress was urgently needed.

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An amendment by Democrat senator Jeff Merkley would restore the funding stripped from the overseas budget for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its science wing, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In March, president Donald Trump’s budget proposal stripped funding from the state department’s contribution to the UN’s climate process.

The US has traditionally contributed around 20% of the operational funding – $6.44m – for the secretariat of the UNFCCC and last year provided $2m to the IPCC, around 45% of its budget. The US contributes further money to other UN climate initiatives.

Report: EU and others to fill UN climate science funding gap left by Trump

The $10m added by the amendment was earmarked for the UNFCCC and IPCC.

The committee’s ranking democrat senator Patrick Leahy said: “The president sent us a budget that was irresponsible and indefensible. We were provided no credible justification for the cuts that were proposed, which would have severely eroded US global leadership.”

Leahy called the president’s budget request “reckless” and said: “This bill does not do enough to protect our national security interests.  Underfunding many critical programs – from UN peacekeeping to climate change to humanitarian relief for victims of war and natural disasters – is unacceptable for the world’s wealthiest, most powerful nation.”

The press office of the UNFCCC said it did not want to comment on the development.

The work of the UNFCCC is supported by obligatory payments, which are tested against each country’s wealth. Trump has indicated that, even if the US leaves the Paris Agreement, it will remain part of the treaty that formed the UNFCCC. Thus, it would remain liable for the obligatory payments. Although his budget indicates the president does not intend to honour the treaty.

All of the IPCC’s funding comes through extra voluntary payments to the UNFCCC, which nations can earmark for the science panel.

Other wealthy member states have been loathe to come forward and publicly offer to replace US payments to the treaty organisation, citing their belief that the US has a responsibility to meet their obligations under the treaty.

On Thursday, Climate Home reported that other countries – including the European Commission, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and the UK – were preparing to step in to fill the funding gap and save the IPCC from plunging into millions of dollars of debt.

The amendment passed through the committee 16 to 14. All the Democrats in the committee voted for the amendment, except Joe Manchin the West Virginian senator. Two Republicans Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins voted in favour.

The House appropriations bill did not replace the funding stripped by Trump and the final outcome of the budget will need to be negotiated between the chambers.

A further amendment, which would have sent $750m to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, which assists poor countries with adapting to climate change, was rejected by the committee.

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The financial situation reached crisis point after Donald Trump this year announced he would halt US contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The US has supplied nearly a third of the panel’s income since its inception and 45% of its funds in 2016.

Even before Trump’s announcement, the panel had started reviewing options as governments in general became less generous. Meeting documents show its reserves will run out at the end of 2017 and debts will exceed $25 million in 2022 if the pot is not replenished.

Sources at the meeting told Climate Home a number of governments had expressed a willingness to increase their contributions, after being updated on the situation on Wednesday. These included the European Commission, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and the UK.

The full list of new donations is expected to be revealed when talks conclude on Sunday. It’s not known whether the increased support will fully cover the shortfall left by the withdrawal of US money.

Meeting documents show the IPCC is facing a financial crunch. Figures are expressed in Swiss Francs

The cash crunch comes as the panel faces a higher workload than ever. In Montreal, delegates are outlining what to include in the body’s sixth assessment report – the next comprehensive overview of the state of climate science – due out in 2021-22. These periodic, weighty reports inform policymaking and political negotiations worldwide.

On top of that, it is preparing three special reports and a methodology report. The first, on the contentious goal to limit global warming to 1.5C, is scheduled for September 2018. Reports on oceans and land use are to follow in 2019, along with updated guidelines on how to account for emissions sources and sinks.

Report: Climate negotiators rally to protect IPCC science funding

“The world has never needed the IPCC more than it does now,” asserts a document reviewing the finance situation. “The effects of climate change are already severe, posing a real threat to human society and natural systems and undermining a sustainable future for all.”

The organisation’s modest budget mostly covers expenses for delegates, particularly from developing countries, to attend meetings. Hundreds of scientists give their time to the endeavour unpaid.

Unlike for some larger UN bodies, there are no rules for how much each country should chip in. To date, only 32 of the IPCC’s 195 member countries have volunteered money.

Government representatives will consider a range of options when they debate the issue on Saturday, including fundraising from the private sector or citizens. However, continuing to rely on government donations looks to be the most likely outcome.

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A draft 2018-19 budget from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposes to eliminate its funding for the IPCC, asking countries to support the body with direct voluntary payments.

But according to several sources present at a budget discussion on Wednesday evening, countries rounded on the UN secretariat.

Shifting the onus of the funding from the core budget of the UNFCCC, which is funded by compulsory contributions from member states, to individual country donors, would allow some to free-ride.

Rarely so united at these talks, the majority of parties rejected the secretariat’s proposal.

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“Parties are the supreme body of this convention, they are the secretariat,” said Bernarditas Muller, a climate advisor to the Philippines government and the Group of 77 and China negotiating bloc.

A German diplomat at the talks told Climate Home: “We made that point very clear that as these two institutions are so closely interlinked, that we would see it as a very bad signal if the UNFCCC contributions to the IPCC wouldn’t continue. And there is as far as I hear it right now a lot of support for that view.”

The UNFCCC sent $243,245 to the IPCC in 2016. Between $250,000 and $300,000 per year had been earmarked for the next budget, according to UNFCCC spokesman Nicholas Nuttall.

Asked whether there had been a pushback from countries, Nuttall said he would not characterise it as such. “More a great deal of interest to really understand our current budget,” he said.

“The UNFCCC secretariat have appreciated how much and how openly all countries are engaging on the budget discussions and we hope we can realise a successful outcome by the end of the May sessions with a view to this budget,” added Nuttall.

The IPCC has struggled for funding in recent years. In 2016, it gathered $4.3m from donor countries and various UN bodies, including the UNFCCC. In 2013, the body collected more than $7m.

Muller said science from the IPCC, which conducts periodic and comprehensive reviews of global climate science, formed the basis of the convention.

“They are independent, they are not under our control. But they provide us with scientific analysis. And we can, as parties, request them to do work. They are the ones actually, who put this issue on the political agenda of states. It’s only if you put it on the political agenda that you can get decisions and policy to address the problem,” she said.

The IPCC and UNFCCC have both been singled out by US president Donald Trump as organisations from which he wants to cut funding in upcoming budgets. The US is the biggest single funder of the UN climate process.

In its draft budget, the UNFCCC assumes the US will continue to contribute.

The post Climate negotiators rally to protect IPCC science funding appeared first on Climate Home News.

That’s the message from scientists fresh from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Geneva last week.

The UN science body has started work on a new and potentially devastating report on ways to avoid warming the earth to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – and the consequences of failure.

Due in September 2018, it will set the political tenor for global talks on climate change through to 2020, by which time the new Paris Agreement on climate change is slated to become operational.

Critically, it will underpin a UN-led review the same year into how countries are delivering on the Paris deal, and perhaps offer the basis for those national goals to be increased.

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Record temperatures in 2016 have raised the urgency of the study, acknowledged Katherine Mach, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University who attended the Geneva gathering.

“With the hot year we feel 1.5C is coming down the barrel… it’s a world we’re going to have to adapt to and this will help us,” she told Climate Home.

“The sense in general was you can’t think about adaptation and mitigation separately and you can’t think about them separately from sustainable development.”

The study’s findings could be painful for the UN’s climate body, still glowing from corralling 195 countries into the Paris deal last December.

Article 2 of the UN climate body’s founding document specifically speaks of preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

Analysis: A brief history of the 1.5C target

The trouble is it’s effectively too late for that, said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC’s last major study and a colleague of Mach’s at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University.

“We are seeing real damage – in the context of Article 2 we have already seen dangerous anthropogenic interference,” he said.

“Now we face a challenge that has profound political and technical implications…we need to find the right mix of adaptation and mitigation.”

Still, it’s worth noting that some critics think the report will be wasted given the fast pace of warming.

“It deflects attention from important and practical research into this illusion that 1.5C is viable. I just don’t see how it will be constructive,” said Mike Hulme, professor of climate and culture at King’s College London.

IPCC's report on 1.5C expected to address following 'substantive issues' says vice chair Thelma Krug #climate pic.twitter.com/vCr9cIy9gx

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) August 24, 2016

Split into six chapters and likely to be around 250 pages long, the 1.5C report will be useful to guide government policy in a world where some climate impacts are now inevitable.

A background document on the report authored by IPCC vice chair Thelma Krug lists 11 ‘substantive challenges’ it’s expected to address, indicating an extensive remit.

These include adaptation needs to cope with 1.5C, implications for loss and damage, costs of tougher carbon cuts and the feasibility of negative emissions technology and other forms of geoengineering.

Thelma Krug outlines some of the key questions the IPCC's 1.5C report will be expected to tackle: pic.twitter.com/lnLaSaWtQF

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) August 24, 2016

Krug’s note suggests it’s also likely to assess the implications of a variety of emission pathways, and in particular their impacts on sustainable development, poverty eradication and food security.

So for example, planned ‘overshoot scenarios’ will draw in research on impacts of warming above 1.5C on coral reefs, sea levels, sea ice and indigenous peoples among others.

Given the short timescale – research needs to be filed by late 2017 to be included in the literature review – it won’t be comprehensive, but the aim is to offer a sense of the challenge.

1.5C acquired huge significance among climate campaigners at last December’s UN climate summit, but few in Paris could articulate exactly what warming to that level would mean.

The tougher 1.5C limit was, said UNFCCC official Florin Vladu in a presentation at the Geneva meeting “less a scientific question of feasibility, but rather as a moral imperative of necessity.”

Report: As IPCC meets to discuss avoiding 1.5C, it is already too late?

That’s a critical observation. Most research has focused on 2C of warming, a historic guardrail governments agreed to avoid at the 2010 Cancun climate talks.

“My impression is a lot of what the report needs to do is provide a setting in which readers understand features of what’s known and what is not known,” said Field.

What is known is that despite the Paris deal, hundreds of power plants using the most carbon-intensive type of fuel – coal – are still being built around the world.

A necessary focus on various energy pathways will, hopes Field, offer governments a “more tangible picture of risks and strong inducement of the kinds of technology available.”

“It’s easy and a little lazy to be downbeat about the process. The world has a lot of options… a lot of decisions will be made… if we make the right ones a lot is possible,” said Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University who was also at the meeting.

“One of big themes in the meeting last week was that responding to climate change is not all about costs… yes climate change poses real risks and for some people very serious risks… but responding to it can be a way to be a better world,” said Mach.

Podcast: Bangladeshi expert talks rich-poor tensions and 1.5C

Allen said the report should establish exactly what the world is locked into in terms of emissions growth. He for one is not convinced that smashing the 1.5C target is inevitable.

“Drawing out the distinction between committed emissions and warming is important and if we can clarify that and make it clear what implications of investment are that will be very helpful,” he said.

One study by the Oxford Martin School in March warned that no fossil fuel power plants could be built after 2017 for the world to have a good chance of avoiding 2C warming.

“A big caveat in that [Martin School] paper was assuming we don’t retire some [plants] before the end of their lives or develop CO2 removal or find ways of compensating for emissions,” said Allen.

As Krug’s scoping document suggested, CO2 removal and geoengineering will feature in the report but it’s not clear how prominent these issues will be.

Plans to plant, burn and store the CO2 from vast quantities of energy crops (known as BECCS) are well-publicised but highly contentious, and the focus of campaigns by some green groups at recent UN climate talks.

Another participant in Geneva told Climate Home an outline of the report indicated there will be no chapter or sub-section that deals with BECCS explicitly.

“In 50 years we will have developed a better way of capturing CO2 instead of getting a tree and burning it. It is remarkably unimaginative,” added Allen.

The post Adaptation takes centre stage as IPCC prepares 1.5C study appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nearly 100 government officials and scientists are in Geneva this week for the launch of the two-year study, which is under the control of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Its findings will form the “scientific basis” of a global stocktake in 2018, when the climate plans of 195 countries will be assessed at a UN meeting, said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee.

“It will be the yardstick on whether countries are doing enough,” the South Korean economist told an opening meeting of invited experts.

July data are out, and what do you know, still 99% chance of a new annual record in 2016. pic.twitter.com/ndSsbYuedA

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) August 15, 2016

Mandated by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the report will assess the scientific and economic viability of avoiding global temperature rises of 1.5C above pre industrial levels.

It’s also expected to look at the potential impacts of warming at and above that level, and detail the potential greenhouse gas emission pathways still available.

Investment in technologies that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere or mass tree planting are among other areas that will be analysed, an IPCC spokesperson told Climate Home.

“It comes at a moment there is urgency and also momentum to really bring science and policy together to make an important decision,” said Thelma Krug, a Brazilian scientist who is IPCC vice chair. “It’s most likely the most pressing report the IPCC will have to produce.”

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Two British climate scientists likely to take part in the study told Climate Home the two-year window for the new report is ambitious given the paucity of research on the 1.5C goal.

The vast majority of reports assessing temperature rises have focused on the 2C warming target, a figure discussed since 1975 and formally agreed at a 2010 UN summit in Cancun.

Even that limit is questionable, said Florin Vladu, an official with the UN climate body. “2C is not a safe limit anymore,” he said, adding “we need to push the defence line.”

Many question whether meeting the 1.5C goal is still possible given the levels of carbon dioxide and other warming gases already in the atmosphere.

Jan Christoph Minx and Sabine Fuss from the Mercator Research Institute say the limit requires “close to zero” of net CO2 is released.

“Even in the most optimistic case, it will not take longer than five years to exhaust the remaining carbon budget at current rates of CO2 emissions,” they said in a Huffington Post article.

“It will be, on the other hand, about 10-25 years before the world crosses the budget line for 2C.”

1.5°C carbon budget will be used up in 5 years #SR15 #IPCC #climatechange #ParisAgreement pic.twitter.com/oeNHhvCaDW

— MCC Berlin (@MCC_Berlin) August 16, 2016

This week NASA underlined fears that levels of warming are on the inexorable rise. July was the hottest month on record, said the US agency’s Gavin Schmidt.

2016 is widely expected to be the warmest year since records began, boosted by climate change and by an El Nino weather event, which causes huge releases of heat from the oceans.

Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are unlikely to dip below 400 parts per million in the near term, a once-iconic level that scientists say heralds warming well above 1C.

Unusual weather events this year that scientists say are linked to climate change include an Arctic ‘heatwave’ in January, a Middle East heat spike of 54C and mass bleaching of coral reefs.

A critical mass of countries are expected to formally approve the Paris climate agreement on 21 September in New York, allowing it to enter into force.

Analysis: Can a GIF change the way we think about global warming?

Still, this week an influential trio of climate writers have declared their lack of faith in governments and their ability to tackle the issue and urged the public to take affirmative action.

“World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing,” wrote 350 founder Bill McKibben in the New Republic, calling for a vast government-led plan to ramp up clean energy capacity.

“The world can cope with 7 or even 10 billion people. But only if we stop eating meat,” said George Monbiot in the Guardian, asking readers to consider becoming vegans.

And in a new weekly mailshot US meteorologist Eric Holthaus said the world was “beyond the point of planting a symbolic tree in your backyard”

“We are risking everything by continuing on this path. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise,” he wrote.

“We can’t have a stable and prosperous global society without the basics of water, food, health, and stability.”

The post UN science panel debates 1.5C as climate records fall appeared first on Climate Home News.

As with other environmental and humanitarian movements, there is always a risk that once the spotlight on the issue fades, the problem will fall down the long list of global policy priorities.

What’s more, the nature of the new climate change regime demands intense scrutiny from other countries, civil society, and the public in general.

That’s because it is a bottom-up approach where parties submit increasingly ambitious plans to cut the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the crisis and are encouraged, though not legally bound to meet their goals.

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It is therefore important to identify occasions to turn the international spotlight back on the climate change crisis and what can be done about it.

The United Nations General Assembly at the end of September, which will feature several days of climate change focused events, is such a moment.

And, though not as high profile as a General Assembly or large climate conference, a number of events in the next couple months deserve attention.

One is this week’s meeting in Geneva of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to discuss a special report on the 1.5C goal and a dialogue on pre-2020 emissions reductions next month in Rabat, Morocco.

Report: Maldives becomes fourth island state to ratify Paris climate deal

These talks are especially valuable to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

The group has long called for a 1.5 degrees global temperature goal and we are confident that a robust report will provide further evidence for why it is so important.

The known science on climate impacts tends to focus on a 2C world.

It appears increasingly certain that any additional warming beyond the approximately 1C the planet has already experienced poses severe risks, but the report will help fill in the blanks and offer insights for alternative greenhouse emissions pathways.

The work is particularly important in light of news that 2015, according to NOAA’s State of the Climate Report, was the hottest year on record and set a number of other ominous milestones as well.

Greenhouse gas emissions were the highest on record; the global surface temperature was the highest on record; tropical cyclones were some of the strongest on record; global sea level rose to the highest level on record.

We also learned that not only has the sea level risen considerably since record keeping began in 1993, it is happening faster than previously understood because of a correction made to satellite data analysis.

Monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (Pic: NOAA)

To be sure, we know that even if all parties’ intended nationally determined contributions from Paris are fully implemented, the resulting global emissions is consistent with a rise in global temperatures of well above 1.5-2C.

It is crucial that emissions reduction efforts are dramatically scaled up in the near term.

Leading up to Paris, AOSIS worked closely with other parties to enhance pre-2020 action under Workstream 2, a parallel track of negotiations to that which led to the Paris Agreement.

The outcome was a collaborative, multi-stakeholder, solutions-focused process for catalyzing new, voluntary cooperation to enhance climate action in the near term.

Ban Ki-moon urges world's largest emitters to ratify #ParisAgreement https://t.co/FOQjnbEDx0 pic.twitter.com/3H5RPuarc7

— UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) August 9, 2016

This work has now been consolidated under the Global Climate Action Agenda.

Part of that decision was the selection of two high-level champions to help usher in progress, Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who presided over COP 21 in Paris and Hakima El Haité, a diplomat from Morocco, which will host COP 22 in Marrakesh.

The champions will take up the issue of pre-2020 action in Rabat in early September where they will explore how to leverage the process Action Agenda to accelerate the deployment of proven climate solutions.

These, of course, are just two of the opportunities to keep climate change at the forefront of our work as the international community and I will be calling attention to others in the weeks and months to come, but these processes in particular will help us better understand the true urgency of the problem and accelerate and what can be done to advance solutions in the near term.

Thoriq Ibrahim is Maldives minister of the environment and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)

The post Why the 1.5C climate limit matters in the Maldives appeared first on Climate Home News.

A day after tweeting his representation of global temperatures from 1850 to 2016, climate scientist Ed Hawkins has gone viral.

Like an avalanche gathering pace, Hawkins’ graphic threatens to blow its own boundaries before it stops in March this year, pixels away from a line marking 1.5C warming.

That’s the line you’ll recall was agreed as a new aspirational warming ceiling by 195 countries at the Paris climate talks last December – and one that looks certain to be breached.

Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) https://t.co/YETC5HkmTr pic.twitter.com/Ypci717AHq

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 9, 2016

Mesmeric yet terrifying, given its implications, the GIF will continue to make waves on the internet for a while yet. But will it change policy?

That’s a question Hoesung Lee, head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate change, is grappling with.

Speaking on the sidelines of a sustainable development conference in Paris hosted by French think tank IDDRI, he tells Climate Home digitally smart communication is a priority.

“It’s very important… we have been somewhat criticised in that our reports are not that easy… and therefore we’re going to do a substantial improvement in our reports,” he says.

Climate torture: UN’s IPCC science panel must deliver clearer message

Communication consultants are coming on board, says Lee, as the IPCC seeks to spread its message beyond the science community and small band of journalists covering the environment.

He seems interested in Hawkins’ work, but appears unmoved as I describe the flickering temperature records on the GIF as they near 1.5C.

This is, after all, what the IPCC has been banging on about for the past decade.

“The IPCC has been showing throughout the fourth and fifth assessment cycles that climate change is occurring right now, affecting ecosystems and we need to take action very urgently,” he says.

Lee appears equally unsurprised when asked about reports that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide emission are now likely to rise above 400 parts per million, already an historic high.

Australian scientists based in Cape Grim, Tasmania, believe their CO2 readings are now so high they’re unlikely to drop below 400ppm as in previous years.

Those readings, together with reports of the prospect of a record Arctic sea ice low from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center illustrate the impacts already underway.

Worrying #Arctic sea ice extent data from @NSIDC pic.twitter.com/6pxAodSlvp

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) May 9, 2016

For Lee, the challenge is to broaden the IPCC’s appeal while not overly simplifying the message, difficult given the vast array of variables climate scientists play with.

While funky GIFs and graphics make a splash on social media, it’s the IPCC’s hard-nosed summaries that are frequently given more credence by governments.

In a time when the Earth seems to be undergoing a profound change, is this the time when the world’s top climate authority tries to address the general public, rather than ruling elites?

“In 8,000 years the earth has never experienced that high of atmospheric concentrations of CO2, so it is a serious matter for the entire global community including the guy on the street,” he says.

But, he adds: “The scientific message is a scientific message… we do not want to dumb down.”

The post Can a GIF change the way we think about global warming? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Press Conference at the Launch of the IPCC Synthesis Report (Pic: UN Photos)

By Richard Klein

This week in Nairobi, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will decide its agenda for the next 5–7 years.

At the top of the list is the Sixth Assessment Report, a comprehensive review to be published in 2021–22. But the most crucial work ahead involves shorter, more focused reports.

The IPCC brings together scientists and other experts from around the world to assess the state of climate science.

The IPCC’s work is important because it provides the scientific underpinning for climate policy, without being prescriptive. The findings are vetted by all the governments, so even if countries’ political priorities differ, they have a shared understanding of the science.

When world leaders approved the historic Paris Agreement last December, their actions were informed by the findings of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2013–2014 – including its warnings of potentially serious climate change impacts from even modest temperature increases.

In 18 tweets: The IPCC’s AR5 climate change report

Those warnings, combined with new science on sea-level rise and other risks, led some governments and civil society groups to argue that the target set at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, to keep warming below 2C, was no longer adequate.

After fierce debates in Paris, the Parties agreed “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.”

But does the science support a 1.5C target? And what might a 1.5C trajectory look like? How feasible would it be? How much would it cost?

We simply do not know – so in Paris, governments “invited” the IPCC to provide a Special Report in 2018 answering those questions.

Special Reports are shorter, focused reports on specific topics; the most recent ones were on managing risks of extreme events and disasters (2012), and renewable energy (2011).

Along with the 1.5C request, the IPCC has received 27 proposals for new Special Reports (though some overlap), on topics ranging from cities; to forests, land use and land degradation; to human health and food security; to oceans and the cryosphere; to aviation and shipping; to carbon markets.

Report: IPCC scientists call for focus on regional climate risks

It would be unprecedented for the IPCC to decline the Paris invitation, even though time is short to conduct and assess the research needed. Thus, in Nairobi, discussions will likely focus not on whether to prepare the report, but how.

The scope will also have to be carefully defined: For example, should the report also consider how a 1.5C target would fit with our knowledge of limits to adaptation, and how it might affect discussions about loss and damage?

That is likely to leave time for, at most, two additional Special Reports. There is a particularly strong push for a report on cities, which are increasingly recognized as key climate actors, and are hotspots for both adaptation and mitigation.

Given multiple related requests, another likely topic is land use and land degradation, which is also relevant to negotiations under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Climate torture: UN’s IPCC science panel must deliver clearer message

All of this could delay the schedule for the Sixth Assessment Report, but that may not be a bad thing.

The IPCC has faced criticism that it works too slowly to meet policy-makers’ needs, and that the Assessment Reports are too dense and impenetrable.

In February, the IPCC hosted an expert meeting on communications that raised fundamental questions about the effectiveness of its reports.

Waiting until after the Marrakesh Climate Change Conference this November to set the agenda for the Sixth Assessment Report would give the IPCC time to consider possible new approaches, and to listen closely to the needs voiced by policy-makers and civil society.

The work ahead is daunting. The challenge now is how to be fast and nimble, to respond to the huge demand for the IPCC’s expertise, without compromising what the world values most in the IPCC: its deep commitment to scientific rigour and policy relevance.

Richard Klein is a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute. He has been a lead author in six IPCC reports, including the last four Assessment Reports, serving three times as coordinating lead author.

The post The UN’s climate science panel must adapt to stay relevant appeared first on Climate Home News.

Sierra Leone has nominated Ogunlade Davidson for top climate science job (Flickr/Global Water Partnership)

By Megan Darby

Six men are in contention to become the UN’s climate science chief, with a decision expected at a meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia later today.

Until last month the race was between one American, three Europeans and a South Korean, but Sierra Leone’s late nomination of mechanical engineering professor Ogunlade Davidson adds to uncertainty over the eventual victor.

Representatives of 140-150 countries elect the next chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who will become the world’s top voice on climate science.

Each government casts one vote, using electronic devices in a secret ballot. If no candidate achieves an overall majority, as looks likely, there will be a second round to decide between the two highest placed.

Some observers suggested Davidson could take a swathe of developing country support, despite the lateness of his bid.

Yet a source close to the process said Sierra Leone had not consulted other African countries on their candidate and the continent was not united behind him. Nor is Davidson in Dubrovnik for the election.

IPCC election: What makes a great UN climate science chief?

The only other candidate from a developing country is South Korea’s Hoesung Lee, who has called for more research focus on practical issues like carbon pricing.

Belgium’s Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the first contender to throw his hat in the ring, is emphasising his experience of consensus-building as an IPCC vice chair.

Chris Field of the USA stresses his scientific credentials. Nebojsa Nakicenovic, jointly nominated by Austria and Montenegro, specialises in cross-disciplinary modelling. Thomas Stocker of Switzerland claims credit for pioneering “headline statements” to clarify the IPCC’s findings.

The #IPCC Chair candidates had a chance to present their vision to all delegations this morning. The (electronic)vote is due after 3pm today

— JPascal van Ypersele (@JPvanYpersele) October 6, 2015

Once the chair position is decided, there will be elections for other positions in the Bureau, which leads and coordinates the IPCC’s work.

In the past, the IPCC has pulled together a comprehensive package of assessment reports on the state of climate science knowledge every 5-7 years.

There has been some talk of producing shorter, more focused interim reports on topics like oceans or carbon pricing.

At the Dubrovnik meeting, delegates will also discuss the organisation’s budget, which on current trends is set to run out before the next round of assessment reports.

While climate scientists give their time to the massive undertaking for free, the IPCC bears a significant bill for them to travel to meetings.

Countries make voluntary contributions to supplement grants from the UN’s climate, environment and meteorological bodies.

The post African candidate opens up IPCC climate science chief race appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rajendra Pachauri, who stepped down this year, stewarded the IPCC through its fourth and fifth Assessment Reports, providing the scientific basis for combating global warming (Flickr/ UN ISDR)

By Alex Pashley

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change embarks on a new era this week as it names the successor to Rajendra Pachauri after 13 years at the helm of the scientific authority.

On Tuesday envoys are set to choose from six male candidates at a forum in the Croatian port city of Dubrovnik.

The timing is opportune two months before a decisive summit in Paris seeking to transform the world’s energy system.

The winner must marshal the UN agency through that next phase, honing its evidence-gathering machine as it battles scepticism to cement the case for curbing carbon emissions.

Given the prominence of the role, what characteristics should its next holder possess? We asked five analysts, many of whom collaborated on the panel’s reports.

Michael Burger, executive director at the Sabin Center for Climate Change, Columbia Law School, New York, US

There are two main characteristics I would look for in the next IPCC leader: popularising communication skills and absolute scientific integrity.

On the one hand, the new IPCC chair needs to be someone who can effectively communicate the complexities of climate science to policymakers and the general public, while staying on message about what it all means: we need to reduce greenhouse gases, deeply and quickly, and adapt to climate impacts. On the other hand, the person needs to be perceived as a scientist, not as an activist, and as a leader in the field.

Rupa Mukerji, adviser at Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, Switzerland

We know the physical science basis for climate change quite well now due to the excellent work of scientists over the past couple of decades.  The confounding variables come from the intersection with social sciences where existing vulnerabilities, lack of power and voice lead to differential impacts and adaptive capacities.

We have an eminent pantheon of candidates for the position of the IPCC Chair this time but they are all quite similar – excellent scientists from the physical sciences, similar in age and backgrounds.  It would be interesting to see how this profile could shift if there were candidates from the social and applied sciences.

I would love to see someone who can lead the work of the IPCC to delve more into the complexities at the interfaces of physical and social sciences.  We would see more diversity in the profiles – more women, younger scientists perhaps.

Jose Marengo, senior scientist at the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warnings of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), Sao Paolo, Brazil

I would expect a leader, with scientific excellency, with international experience and, with a touch of sensibility. Some that can talk equally to an older scientist and to a young scientist that can negotiate crisis and discussions, and that dialogue with presidents, kings, prime ministers as well as to kids from schools and sceptics.

The IPCC chair should be someone that can listen to everyone and should not impose his/her ideas, but should also be strong enough to confront discussions and attacks to the panel.

Brigitte Knopf, secretary general of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, Germany

The IPCC needs a more regional and solution-oriented focus: we need a better understanding of the regional socio-economic impacts of climate change and a more detailed assessment of national policy instruments.

This will be especially important in times following the climate summit in Paris when countries will hopefully implement their “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)”. The IPCC could explore which policy options are available for mitigation and adaptation.

The focus would therefore shift from problem analysis to solution-oriented assessments, what implies a shift from natural to social sciences. For emphasising the regional perspective, a chairman from Africa or Latin America would be a suitable candidate. Alternatively, a candidate representing the social sciences could underline a shift in focus within the IPCC.

Mark Maslin, professor of climatology, University College London, UK

The essential requirements for the next chair are:

1. They must be a highly experienced and respected scientist in their own field of study.

2. They must be very experienced at organize and motivate large groups of international scientists.

3. They should be very experienced with engaging with international political bodies, international negotiators and politicians.

4. They need to be engaging and charismatic when dealing with the media and the public.

5. They must be politically independent and clearly not swayable by their own home nation or any geopolitical block of influence.

6. They must also not have a political agenda beyond the promotion and presentation of the very best climate science.

The post IPCC election: What makes a great UN climate science chief? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Press Conference at the Launch of the IPCC Synthesis Report in November 2014 (Pic: UN Photos)

By Alex Pashley

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is under “nuanced northern domination”, weakening the legitimacy of its global warming assessments, according to new research.

The UN’s science agency and leading authority on global warming could produce better research if its report authors came from a wider range of countries, institutes, and academic backgrounds, a paper published in Nature Climate Change said on Monday.

With the panel a month away from electing a new chair to replace India’s Rajendra Pachauri, the research could ignite a debate about its make-up.

“[B]roadening the geographical and disciplinary basis of participation in the IPCC may help unearth the key conflicts and choices to be made in climate change mitigation policy,” wrote researchers from European and Canadian institutes.

IPCC chair election: 5 candidates, 8 weeks to go

Researchers analysed the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, a mammoth document which last year projected the planet could warm by as much as 5C by 2100 as storms and drought grow more severe.

They examined the report’s ‘Working Group III’ dealing with the contentious issue of mitigation – or how to compel countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Of the 273 contributors, they found a US- and UK-based dominance in their careers and their networks reinforcing a North-South divide.

Many institutions like Stanford University in the US, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria, act as breeding ground for IPCC authors, shaping their interpretation of the climate change problem.

While the US has a representative 19% of authors in the set, the UK has 6%, and developing countries had 43%; the ‘top 20′ co-authors’ degrees of “inbetweenness” are less balanced.

Five from the US, and five from Austria, with no other country having more in this group.

The diagram shows lines linking where researchers studied and worked (Credit: Nature Climate Change)

India and Brazil are two outliers in the developing world that make strong contributions, though the rest of the developing world is largely absent.

Gender is another factor, with women making up just 18% of authors of the third working group, and only two appearing in the ‘top 20’ co-authoring network.

Scholars from the humanities are “marginalized” in comparison with economists, engineers and natural scientists.

Analysis: IPCC climate change report in 18 tweets

This might explain how the IPCC has achieved a “strong harmonization of views”, compared with the diversity one finds in the social sciences, they wrote.

It also damages its capacity to manage effectively questions of justice or governance, which don’t align with the skill set of authors.

A changed composition of authors may make the approval process of its key ‘summary for policymakers’ (SPM) more difficult, splitting the organisation.

“However, the mitigation report and its ensuing SPM might well become more legitimate and encompassing to more countries and scientific audiences,” authors concluded.

The post UN climate science panel too northern, too male – study appeared first on Climate Home News.

The candidates for the 2015 IPCC election: Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Chris Field, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Hoesung Lee, Thomas Stocker (Pictures: Flickr)

By Megan Darby

There are no opinion polls. The votes will be cast by government officials. Even the candidates admit they have little idea how it will go.

The election of a new chair for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eight weeks away, is a hard one to get a handle on.

Yet the successful nominee will become the world’s go-to authority on climate science, replacing Rajendra Pachauri, who quit in February to contest allegations of sexual harassment.

He (barring last-minute entries, it’s going to be a man) must uphold the integrity of an evidence-gathering exercise that relies on the unpaid labour of thousands of scientists.

He must navigate the competing priorities of national policymakers, as they grapple with global warming impacts and decarbonising their economies.

And he will likely make an opening speech at December’s UN climate summit in Paris, setting out the context for action.

So who is the right choice for this privileged platform? Five people have been put forward by their governments.

THE CANDIDATES

Hoesung Lee, South Korea
Thomas Stocker, Switzerland
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Belgium
Chris Field, USA
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Austria and Montenegro

At first glance, they look quite similar – and not just because they are exclusively male and from the global north. All boast professorships, reams of peer-reviewed publications and experience in the IPCC machine.

Their manifestos hit many of the same buzzwords: communication, outreach, diversity, transparency, policy relevance…

The candidates scrupulously avoid commenting on their rivals, not helping with the task of telling them apart.

But a closer look reveals some differences of emphasis, if nothing else.

Radical v conservative

Hoesung Lee, from South Korea, has perhaps the most concise and radical pitch, setting out his vision in three bullet points.

It shows he is not afraid to wade into politically sensitive territory, calling for a focus on issues like job creation, health and poverty alleviation.

Making science relevant to policymakers is core to the IPCC’s mission, but there is a trade-off with (perceived) scientific integrity.

The US nominee, Chris Field, takes the other end of the spectrum. Perhaps reflecting his country’s polarised climate discourse, he conservatively bases his case on scientific performance.

“I am a scientist of the highest caliber,” he declares on his website.

Aren’t they all? If you look at the breadth and depth of candidates’ research, he tells RTCC, selecting his words carefully, the “differences are potentially meaningful”.

And he is uncomfortable talking about the political element of running for election, declining to say where he has canvassed for votes.

Outreach

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the Belgian candidate who was first to declare his interest in the position, has no such qualms.

The week before RTCC interviewed him, van Ypersele had been to Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina.

This was not just to meet government figures, but also for wider IPCC outreach. In Buenos Aires, he proudly claims to have addressed an audience of 2,500 in a theatre, the science interspersed with dance acts.

He makes a selling point of his full-time commitment to the role, with the backing of his university and government.

Although when talking to prospective voters, he says: “The IPCC should not be prescriptive – I never tell them they should choose me. I explain to them my vision.”

Crossing boundaries

The last to declare his candidacy, Nebojsa Nakicenovic is also the only one not currently part of the IPCC’s management “bureau”.

“I might bring a little bit of fresh air in the process,” he tells RTCC – although he has been involved with the IPCC since its inception.

It wasn’t a late decision to run, he says, but his joint nomination from two governments took a little longer to coordinate.

Nakicenovic calls Montenegro home and is professionally based in Austria. His specialism is emissions scenarios that bring together human activities and climate change impacts.

“Science is a very wide spectrum. My wish would be to see much more integration across these disciplinary boundaries. That is a natural progression for the IPCC,” he says.

His electioneering in the coming weeks is targeted at gatherings of policymakers: a New York meeting on sustainable development goals and interim climate talks in Bonn next month.

Switzerland’s Thomas Stocker, a physical scientist by background, has recently promoted an increased focus on the regional impacts of climate change.

A pioneer of the “headline statements” included in assessment reports to help get a clear message across, he told RTCC communication was of “high importance”.

On the future of the IPCC, his CV calls for development of young scientists and regional experts, with more frequent outreach.

‘Impossible guess’

This is all very well, but what do the voters think? Representatives of some 130-140 governments are expected to show up to Dubrovnik in October for the election.

If no candidate gets a majority vote in the first round, there will be a run-off between the two highest placed.

“It is next to impossible to guess how the governments will be voting,” says Nakicenovic. “There is a huge diversity of interests, of concerns about climate change and response strategies.”

Even Belgium’s van Ypersele, with his long-running campaign, is not certain of support.

“I am confident I will have many votes,” he says. “Often, the ministers are very polite and then it is not always evident what they will ultimately decide, but it is good that they listen and we talk face to face.”

Split Euro vote?

With any international process, one suspects there are diplomatic concerns at work, as well as considerations of merit.

A source close to the race, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three European candidates might split the vote.

“I can see them knocking each other out in the first round,” the source said. “I would not be surprised if the second round was between Chris and Hoesung.”

Is it like Eurovision, a song contest in which people tend to vote for their countries’ regional allies?

Frank McGovern, an official representing Ireland (a popular EU country and frequent winner of Eurovision), laughingly dismisses the idea.

“I actually don’t think that is that important,” he tells RTCC. “The candidate has to be respected by the scientific community, manage the IPCC process, really good communication skills and understanding of policy issues.”

And the chair is not the only position up for election, he points out. There will also be appointments to head up the different work streams and play coordinating roles.

“You have to have a good geographic distribution of players at the higher echelons… when we are making up our mind about who we are going to vote for, we will look at the whole package.”

The post IPCC chair election: 5 candidates, 8 weeks to go appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nebojsa Nakicenovic has entered the IPCC race (Pic: Flickr/UNIDO)

By Megan Darby

Austria and Montenegro have entered an energy economics expert into the contest to lead the UN’s climate science panel.

Nebojsa Nakicenovic, deputy head of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), goes up against four other candidates for the prestigious post.

A relative outsider, Nakicenovic has three months to convince representatives of governments to vote for him.

“Nakicenovic is the ideal candidate for this highly influential position,” said Austrian environment minister Andrä Rupprechter.

“He is one of the world’s most renowned scientists in the field of climate change and has shown strong leadership during his tenure at IIASA.”

The Montenegrin government added in its nomination letter: “His knowledge and practical experience in both the science and policy realms, in the developed as well as the developing world, make him a uniquely qualified candidate.”

Briefing: Who will head up the UN’s top climate science body?

At stake is the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on the science of global warming.

In October, officials from each country will elect a successor to Rajendra Pachauri, to steer the body over the coming years.

The other candidates are Hoesung Lee of South Korea; Jean-Pascal van Ypersele of Belgium, Chris Field of the US and Switzerland’s Thomas Stocker.

While he has been involved in the work of the IPCC, Nakicenovic is the only nominee not currently on the bureau.

His expertise is in clean energy systems and he advised the UN on its Sustainable Energy for All initiative.

The successful candidate must make sure the IPCC is producing evidence relevant to policymakers as they struggle to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate.

At the same time, he must preserve the scientific integrity of the institution amid the fraught politics of climate action.

The post Outsider enters race to head UN climate science panel appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN’s climate body meet in Japan in March 2014 (Flickr/ Greg McNevin)

By Alex Pashley

The UN’s top scientific agency will regroup today to talk strategy.

Building on the release of a mammoth report last year, experts at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are to discuss how to strap future social changes to their predictions.

Scientists will merge ‘shared socioeconomic pathways’ with different trajectories for levels of greenhouse gases over the century, based on how the planet slows the burning of fossil fuels.

“We use scenarios much like testing probes to explore future societal developments and their consequences for climate and the environment,” said Keywan Riahi, a lead author on the IPCC’s latest assessment report and convening the three-day meet in Vienna.

At IIASA this week: @IPCC_CH expert meeting on SSP scenarios for #climate research http://t.co/7AJWi7oJ2m

— IIASA (@IIASAVienna) May 18, 2015

Report: Big questions loom for UN’s IPCC climate science panel

The scenarios map interactions between the economy, a warming climate and an energy sector in flux as clean energy challenges carbon-intensive mainstays.

Those insights are key amid a world population set to swell to 11 billion by 2100, and spectrum of future carbon dioxide emissions, seen in the unwieldy-titled ‘representative concentration pathways’ (RCPs) below.

(Photo: Global Carbon Project)

Set up in 1988, the UN climate body provides the scientific backing to ongoing climate talks set to strike a global deal in Paris this December.

In the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) rolled out over 2013-14, the IPCC said “human influence on the climate is clear” with continued carbon emissions causing “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts”.

Report: IPCC could conduct annual climate review, says Pachauri

The IPCC facilitated the development of new scenarios in the AR5 and assessed them in tandem with leading scientists. Over 800 contributed to the report, working for free while holding posts at other universities and institutes.

“The scenarios from the research community form the backbone of our analysis of potential climate change impacts as well as mitigation and adaptation solutions,” said Ottmar Edenhofer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of Working Group III, which deals with the mitigating climate change.

The panel is set to appoint a new chair by October, who will shape the institution’s future after 12 years headed by Rajendra Pachauri.

The post IPCC meets to review new climate fighting tools appeared first on Climate Home News.

IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri and IPCC WG-1 Co-Chair Thomas Stocker confer in Copenhagen (Photo by IISD/ENB)

By Ed King 

Leading climate scientists and advisors stand accused of giving the public false hope that dangerous levels of warming can be averted. 

That’s the view of Oliver Geden, a researcher at the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Writing in the latest edition of Nature, Geden says government advisors are under pressure to offer solutions that can keep warming within what is deemed acceptable levels.

“Scientific advisers must resist pressures that undermine the integrity of climate science,” he writes.

“Instead of spreading false optimism, they must stand firm and defend their intellectual independence, findings and recommendations – no matter how politically unpalatable.”

He adds: “Scientific advisers should resist the temptation to be political entrepreneurs, peddling their advice by exaggerating how easy it is to transform the economy or deploy renewable technologies, for instance.”

In 2009, governments agreed to limit temperature rises to below 2C above pre industrial levels, although some countries especially vulnerable to climate impacts say this should be 1.5C.

The 2C goal is viewed as politically delicate. When US climate envoy Todd Stern argued it was impractical in 2012 he was met with stiff criticism from developed and developing countries.

Tipping point

But while some believe it will be hard to achieve, scientists say passing that limit will lead to more floods, droughts, and sea level rise due to melting ice sheets.

In March this year Petra Tschakert, a coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment said it was “utterly inadequate”.

In June, the UN is due to report on a review of the 2C goal, but with negotiations on a global climate pact at an advanced stage and due to be signed off at a Paris summit in December, Geden argued it is time for a reality check on those proposed targets.

Specifically he maintained the reliance on negative emissions in some potential climate mitigation trajectories is impractical.

“Most models assume that this can be achieved using a combination of approaches known as BECCS: bioenergy (which would require 500 million hectares of land — 1.5 times the size of India) and carbon capture and storage, an unproven technology.”

And he said talks in Paris later this year world likely be aimed at a “weaker climate goal” if policymakers read the “fine print” in reports produced by the UN’s IPCC climate science panel, which he says are less confident about avoiding 2C.

Policy neutral

The IPCC has historically steered clear of policy pronouncements, instead offering a range of warming scenarios and emission trajectories to allow governments to formulate policy.

Its last set of reports, issued between 2013 and 2014, warned if countries continues to burn fossil fuels at their current rate the world could lock in 2C of warming in under 30 years’ time.

Speaking to RTCC, Geden said he was in favour of ambitious climate policies, but he wanted to highlight what he felt were misleading benchmarks.

“There is an uneasiness among climate scientists… it will be a polarised discussion,” he said, “but I don’t want to lose the silent majority of climate scientists.”

Commenting on the paper, Niklas Höhne, director of the New Climate Institute said Geden had confused climate science and politics in his argument.

“The IPCC has never advocated for any target and has not commented on the feasibility, nor has the UNEP gap report. Both have shown the scenarios and the related assumptions, such as the need for net negative global emissions in some cases,” he said.

“Both reports do not make a judgement on the feasibility. They leave that to the policy makers.”

Höhne – an IPCC lead author on climate policies and international cooperation – said there was a “political value” in having a target for countries to aim for.

“The value 2C, 2.5C or 1.5C and its feasibility can be contested and remains a value judgement, but it is important to have one at all.

“Since Geden does not present an alternative, he can be read that he wants to abandon a goal altogether. This would leave us with a far less climate friendly political situation than before, as negotiating a new goal would take years.”

In a statement Nick Nuttall, spokesperson for the UN’s climate body, argued the 2C goal should be seen less as a target and more as a “defence line” for humanity.

“Every country on Earth–supported by rising ambition by thousands of cities and companies– is working with increasing optimism towards a new universal agreement in Paris in December,” he said.

“As we have said many times, the climate action plans or INDCs being put forward so far will not on their own keep the world under a 2 degrees C rise.

“But we are confident that Paris can put in place the policies, pathways, structures and finance that can assist all nations to progressively ramp up their ambition over time in order to make the transformations needed to stay under the internationally agreed goal.”

The post Leading scientists accused of offering false hope on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate change stories that are framed as ‘disaster’, like floods, are more likely to make it onto TV news. But these sorts of images make people less empowered to take action on climate change. (Pic: Ministry of Defence/Richard Cave)

By Saffron O’Neill

The release of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should be key moments for policymaker and public engagement with climate change, with the media playing a major role in communicating IPCC findings.

But how newsworthy really is the IPCC? And does it receive the sort of media coverage that is likely to increase non-expert engagement?

We undertook a study which, for the first time, investigated multiple media (TV, newspapers, social media), multiple countries, and the effect of images, in the communication of the IPCC reports.

Understanding these dimensions is important, because while most people get their news from TV (or for younger people, from social media), researchers to date have almost exclusively looked at newspaper coverage only.

And the role of images in climate communication is key, because images influence our emotional response to climate change and can even shape our policy preferences.

Is it news?

First, we explored the newsworthiness of the IPCC reports. The IPCC was far more newsworthy in the UK than the US, gaining almost five times as much TV coverage; a pattern also repeated in the newspaper and Twitter data.

The newsworthiness also differed by working group. The IPCC has three working groups which focus on physical climate science (WGI), impacts and adaptation (WGII) and mitigation (WGIII).

Working group III received far less coverage than either WGI or WGII. This was consistent across all the media sources and both countries we examined.

Framing

Second, we investigated how the IPCC reports were “framed” in the media. Here, frames are the storylines that journalists use to communicate why climate change might be a problem, who might be responsible for it, and what action should be taken.

Frames can be recognised and categorised through elements such as the quoted sources, the narrative theme of the article, metaphors, and distinctive visual imagery.

We found ten frames used across the IPCC media coverage: settled science, political or ideological struggle, role of science, uncertain science, disaster, security, morality and ethics, opportunity, economics and health.

Each of these frames will emphasise or downplay particular aspects of climate change.

Struggle or opportunity?

There were considerable differences in how the media framed each working group report. We found reporting of WGI was often contested and politicised, using frames like uncertain science or political or ideological struggle; whereas the reporting of WGII and WGIII used a more diverse selection of frames including the opportunity and morality and ethics frames.

Some frames are likely to be more effective and engaging people with climate change than others – for example, the opportunity or health frames are both able to link the distant issue of climate change to peoples’ everyday life.

Indeed, research by Ed Maibach and colleagues has shown that using the health frame to communicate the potential health benefits of mitigation-related policy actions (for example, burning less coal) is particularly compelling.

Yet our study found that these more engaging frames are not used much at all in media reporting, with the health frame used just once across our entire sample of news media reports.

Climate story fatigue

There are a number of hypotheses about why newsworthiness and framing differed between the two countries and across the working groups.

Certainly, the sequential release of the three working groups is likely to have played a role in determining how much coverage each one received (WGI was released in Autumn 2013, with WGII and WGIII bunched closely together in Spring 2014).

Perhaps journalists felt a “climate story fatigue” when it came to covering WGIII so soon after WGII.

Dueling experts

It is also likely that the availability of visual content and accessible storylines played a part.

While the “dueling experts” of the uncertain science frame, or the dramatic visual imagery of the disaster frame, are well-used devices, perhaps the story of WGIII is yet to be fully developed – despite potentially newsworthy material around key WGIII questions such as future energy provision, or diet and climate.

It is particularly surprising to see the absence of the health frame, considering the human interest, and thus news values, that this frame offers.

The IPCC mandate is to provide a rigorous and balanced review of the scientific, technical and socio-economic information on climate change to decision makers.

Effective communication is key in delivering this, which the IPCC recognises in its Communications Strategy.

We hope the findings from our study, together with the others in Nature Climate Change’s Focus Issue, contribute to an opening up of the conversation around climate change communication, and development of the IPCC’s communication strategy.

Saffron O’Neill is a senior lecturer in geography at Exeter University

The post Media coverage of UN climate science reports: why it matters appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rajendra Pachauri has stepped down as chair of the IPCC. Who’s next? (Pic: Flickr/IPCC Photo/David Plas)

By Megan Darby

It is 13 years since the top job in the world’s leading authority on climate change was last contested.

Rajendra Pachauri, outgoing chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was elected unchallenged for a second term in 2008.

The Indian scientist rode a wave of approval after the organisation scooped a Nobel Peace Prize.

He was always due to step down this year, his departure hastened by the allegations of sexual harassment of a staffer that emerged last month. Pachauri denies the allegations.

Now, the race is on for his successor. In seven months’ time, government representatives meet in Dubrovnik to elect a new figurehead for the science body.

Who is in the running?

Three candidates have been nominated by their respective governments. Another four are understood to be considering the position.

All are male and only one comes from a country classed by the UN as developing: South Korea. Their bios can be found below.

Countries have until a month before the election to put forward any scientist they please. The later they leave it, the less time there will be for campaigning.

The most obvious contenders are the 31 members of the Bureau, who lead the IPCC’s scientific work.

The dearth of women on the shortlist for chair reflects a wider gender imbalance, with only five in the Bureau.

The same cannot be said for the under-representation of candidates from developing countries. IPCC election rules set regional quotas for Bureau positions, which serves to make sure scientists from poorer parts of the world get a voice.

How is the election decided?

The 195 countries that are members of the IPCC each get a vote, cast in a secret ballot at the next summit in October.

There are no official hustings and the result will be determined as much by diplomatic trade-offs as the contenders’ qualifications.

In a nod to transparency, two candidates have already published their CVs and manifestos online.

What does the IPCC do?

The IPCC is responsible for providing authoritative overviews of the latest climate science at regular intervals.

In the past, these have come out every 5-7 years and been split into three workstreams: physical science, impacts of climate change and ways to mitigate it.

Finally, a synthesis report brings the three together.

Each report relies on hundreds of scientists working unpaid to condense the evidence from thousands of scientific studies.

The reports form the evidence base for the politically fraught international negotiations on action to combat climate change.

What is the chair’s role?

The chair must make sure the IPCC’s output is both scientifically rigorous and relevant to policymakers.

It is a role that demands a certain dose of diplomatic skill, as well as sound scientific credentials.

There are also strategic challenges to tackle, such as boosting representation of experts from developing countries and updating the organisation’s clunky communications.

The IPCC is “at a crossroads,” Robert Stavins, a Harvard professor, warns in a recent blog.

“Its size has increased to the point that it has become cumbersome, it sometimes fails to address the most important issues, and – most striking of all – it is now at risk of losing the participation of the world’s best scientists, due to the massive burdens that participation entails.”

Who are the candidates?

Belgian scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele has been campaigning for months (Pic: Flickr/EC/CE)

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium)

The first to declare his candidacy, in February 2014, van Ypersele has a head start on the competition.

One of three vice chairs of the IPCC, he has been active in outreach. His CV emphasises his communication skills and cites training in chairing meetings and “non-violent communication” above his scientific achievements.

His scientific background is in modelling climate change and its effects on human activities. He is a professor at the Universite Catholique de Louvain.

If elected, he would lobby for more funds to support IPCC authors, outreach and communication efforts – and to elevate the chair role to a full-time position.

He says: “Let’s assess the science of climate change together, in the most balanced, policy-relevant way, in the interest of all!”

Thomas Stocker wants to see the IPCC focus more on regional climate threats (Pic: University of Bern/Adrian Moser)

Thomas Stocker (Switzerland)

The second to be nominated, Stocker is one of two co-chairs of the IPCC’s physical science working group.

A contributor to the famous “hockey stick graph”, he specialises in mining historic climate data from polar ice cores.

Based at the University of Bern, Stocker boasts more than 200 publications. He is pushing for the IPCC to focus more on regional climate risks.

He says: “A strong IPCC builds the common ground on which the world develops strategies to confront climate change — one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

Chris Field (US)

The US candidate co-chairs the impacts and adaptation working group and his research has touched on the other strands of IPCC work.

Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University.

He matches Stocker for productivity, with more than 200 publications.

He says: “With a genuine acceptance by the governments that reports from the IPCC represent the definitive assessment of what we know and what we don’t know… that is a wonderfully powerful starting point.”

And the unconfirmed runners…

Vice chair Hoesung Lee, a South Korean academic focused on the economics of climate change, is expected to stand for election.

Germany’s Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the mitigation workstream and expert in technological change and policy, is understood to be considering the position.

Austria and the UK may put forward candidates from outside the Bureau: Nebojsa Nakicenovic and David Griggs. Nakicenovic specialises in energy economics, while Griggs has a meteorology background.

The post IPCC calling: Who will head up the UN’s top climate science body? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: kris krüg/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

The UN’s climate science panel has distanced itself from the allegations of sexual harassment facing its former chairman Rajendra Pachauri, while acknowledging that his sudden departure was a “difficult moment”.

After a week of discussions on the future of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Nairobi this week, the organisation’s secretary Renate Christ said that the allegations “do not relate to the IPCC” but concern only his work in Delhi.

“We cannot ignore the allegations against Dr Pachauri but the allegations are part of an ongoing case,” she said, adding that the organisation would therefore not take questions on the proceedings.

Pachauri stepped down as chairman of the IPCC on Tuesday in the wake of a police investigation into claims that he had sent inappropriate emails and WhatsApp messages to a 29-year-old employee of the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute, which he headed.

Christ added that the panel had raised the issue of workplace respect at the meeting in light of the allegations.

“It is appropriate for us at this juncture to examine our own internal policies on harassment. Accordingly this week the panel emphasised the need to ensure a respectful workplace where everyone’s rights are respected and upheld.”

Developing countries

During the week, the panel “worked hard to ensure a seamless transition and to focus on the important job at hand,” said Christ.

This included important questions for the future of the IPCC, including its size, structure and composition.

The panel announced a decision to increase the representation of developing countries in the bureau by increasing its members from 31 to 34.

“This goal is to deepen our understanding of climate change and its implications not only for developing countries but the entire world,” said Christ. “Climate change is after all a challenge for the global commons, so we want our work to address and be relevant to that challenge.”

The panel also agreed to boost the role of developing country scientists by improving access to non-English language papers, while encouraging authors of such papers to become more closely involved in the process.

They would also consider how to train and support young scientists in developing countries – although this is something that is beyond the mandate of the IPCC.

Overall, the status quo would be maintained, with the IPCC continuing to produce assessment reports at intervals of five to seven years, with more focused reports on specific topics of scientific interest in between.

However, there would be an emphasis on making these more readable for both policymakers and society by involving graphic designs and science writers in the development of the reports.

“This meeting has reminded me of what can be accomplished when people from around the world come together to reach a common goal,” said IPCC chairman Ismail El Gizouli.

“The IPCC is indeed a whole whose sum is greater than its parts.”

The post Rajendra Pachauri allegations will not affect IPCC work, say officials appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Steve Easterbrook/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Today the UN’s science panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), begins a week of soul searching in Nairobi, Kenya.

The panel, set up in 1988, will be tackling the questions of a typical midlife crisis: what’s my purpose? Am I going about it in the right way? Does anyone really care about me?

As government panels go, the IPCC is particularly introspective. Scientists release a new assessment report every six years or so, after which they consider in depth the successes and failures of the process and make suggestions for improvements.

It’s hardly surprising that the IPCC engages in this ritual angst. Its purpose is poorly understood and its work frequently maligned by climate change sceptics and vested interests who either don’t believe what it’s saying, or would simply rather it said something else.

“I think the IPCC is by and large a fairly well functioning organisation, but it has a hard time explaining to the rest of the world why it’s there and what it should be doing,” said Richard Klein, a scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute who worked on the most recent report, released in four instalments in 2013-14.

Lots of work

At the meeting in Nairobi this week, delegates will consider a menu of potential improvements drawn up by the Task Group on the Future Work of the IPCC – a team established in 2013.

The resignation of IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri – who is in India fighting sexual harassment allegations – casts a particularly dark cloud over the gathering.

Nonetheless, an IPCC spokesperson told RTCC that it will not affect the week’s agenda, with the structure, scope and composition of the IPCC all set to come under the microscope.

IPCC agrees on Ismail El Gizouli as acting chair after R.K Pachauri steps down http://t.co/94AY7Ua1k5 @UNEP @IPCC_CH pic.twitter.com/gcItNaqVZv

— UNFCCC (@UNFCCC) February 24, 2015

One of the big questions is whether the IPCC is trying to do too much.

Over 830 scientists took part in piecing together the latest mammoth report. They do not get paid for their contributions, and have to balance it with full time jobs at other institutions and universities.

“These assessments are enormous amounts of work – some of that time spent doing more research might be more valuable,” said Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.

Combine that with the fact that much of the science is not changing a great deal between reports, and a strong case emerges for stripping down the work to something more manageable.

“The degree to which each new assessment has provided a different view of the science of climate change is diminishing,” said David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey and a coordinating lead author on the most recent IPCC report.

“As we would expect, we are providing a consistent picture of the science of climate change from assessment to assessment and that’s unlikely to change substantially in the future. For that reason I think there is scope for really thinking about how the IPCC is serving the policymaking community.”

A message to governments

Boiled down, serving the policymaking community is what the IPCC is all about.

While it is written by scientists, it is commissioned and owned by governments. After a lengthy review process, delegates from 195 countries agree to sign off the report – which basically means that they subscribe to the basic science of climate change.

Each report comes with a “summary for policymakers”, which condenses the key messages into a shorter document that heads of state should – in theory – be able to understand.

This is a rare moment where scientists have the ear of those in power, but at the moment it is something of a wasted opportunity, says Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

With each summary standing at a little over 30 pages, he doubts that any time-pressed prime minister or president would take the time to wade through it.

“If you have something like radiative forcing and RCP 2.6 in there, you’re immediately so far down the jargon route that no one who’s not a bit of a specialist will be able to understand it,” he said.

“Of course the argument is often made that that doesn’t matter, because it will be interpreted, distilled by bureaucrats and people in the communication business. But the problem is that, as soon as that happens, the IPCC has lost control of the process.”

Slimming down

If governments want to continue receiving these reports – and it seems like they do – then one possibility is restructuring the assessment cycle so they focus more on new science, and less on repeating the old mantras.

Hans-Otto Pörtner, a scientist at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and a coordinating lead author on the IPCC, suggested more interim reports looking at specific issues could be one way to approach the issue.

“For example there could be a special report on the oceans with all the detailed information and so forth, and then for the main report it could be a summary of that special report, and that could be done for other fields as well,” he said.

The IPCC is barred from becoming too radical by the fact that its reports must gain the consensus of governments, and that it has a particular mandate to fulfil.

This states that: “IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies.”

IN DEPTH: Latest climate science news and analysis

And there is a danger that the body could end up attempting to be all things to all people, adds Klein.

“What makes an IPCC report an IPCC report is that it has gone through three rounds of very rigorous review, and even if you’re going to have an interim product and you still want them to have the IPCC stamp of approval you can’t do that without those review processes.

“So the only way in which you could reduce the amount of time to prepare those products would be to give even less time to the authors. I think that would be challenging.”

2015 will be a crucial year for the IPCC. It will elect a new chair and learn important lessons – not least how to deal with an unforeseen sexual harassment scandal.

But it will be whether governments take such suggestions of structural change from tired scientists that will, in the end, be what effects the scientific contribution of the IPCC reports.

The post Big questions loom for UN’s IPCC climate science panel appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: UN ISDR/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

The UN’s climate science chief Rajendra Pachauri has stepped down after allegations of sexual harassment.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that Pachauri’s decision was effective immediately.

“The actions taken today will ensure that the IPCC’s mission to assess climate change continues without interruption,” said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Pachauri skipped a key IPCC meeting in Nairobi this week after police started investigating claims that he had harassed a 29-year-old employee of TERI, the Indian organisation that he heads.

He will be replaced by Sudanese vice-chair Ismail El Gizouli.

Pachauri, who has been chairman of the IPCC since 2002, was due to step down in October this year, at a meeting where his full time replacement will be elected.

He denies the charges levied against him, claiming that his computer was hacked.

Letter

Pachauri announced his resignation in a letter addressed to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

“The IPCC needs strong leadership and dedication of time and full attention by the Chair in the immediate future, which under the current circumstances I may be unable to provide, as shown by my inability to travel to Nairobi to chair the plenary session of the Panel this week,” he wrote.

He said that he had intended to resign in November last year, following the release of the IPCC’s synthesis report – the fourth installment of its four-part assessment – but was advised by “close friends and colleagues…to continue with outreach efforts worldwide”.

He describes the protection of the planet as “my religion and my dharma” and offers to continue to support and advise the IPCC in the future.

Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC in 2007.

However, he was enmeshed in another controversy in the same year due to a false claim in the fourth assessment report that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

TERI followed his resignation from the IPCC with an announcement that he was also going “on leave for the time being” from the organisation.

The post Pachauri quits as IPCC chair following harassment allegations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: UNIDO/Flickr

By Ed King

The head of the UN’s climate science panel has withdrawn from a meeting in Nairobi this week after police in India started investigating allegations of harassment made against him.

Rajendra Pachauri stands accused of sending inappropriate emails, texts and WhatsApp messages to a 29-year old colleague at the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), where he is director.

His lawyers say he denies all charges, and believes his phone and computer were hacked.

The 74-year-old had planned to attend the 41st meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which starts on Tuesday, where the future of the body will be discussed.

But in a statement the IPCC confirmed his duties would be taken up by a co-chair.

“The Chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri, PhD, has informed the IPCC that he will be unable to chair the plenary session of the IPCC in Nairobi next week because of issues demanding his attention in India.”

A spokesperson from Pachauri’s office said he would provide “all assistance and cooperation” to Indian police in their investigations.

Regarded as the world’s leading authority on global warming, the IPCC released its last major report into the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in 2014.

It warned governments they must eliminate greenhouse has emissions this century or face average temperatures rising 2C above pre industrial levels, leading to increased flooding, droughts and rising sea levels.

The post UN climate panel chair to miss meeting due to harassment allegations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Pic: UN Photos)

By Ed King

The head of the UN’s climate science body will participate in next week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Nairobi, despite facing allegations of harassment at home. 

According to reports from Delhi, police are investigating a case of sexual harassment against Rajendra Pachauri, made by a member of staff at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

The 75-year old denies the claim and in an email exchange with the Times of India said his email and other “communication devices” had been hacked.

“Unknown cyber criminals have gone ahead and have unauthorisedly accessed my computer resources and communication devices and further committed various criminal activities,” he added.

No charges have been laid by Indian police.

An IPCC spokesperson told RTCC Pachauri still planned to attend the four-day meeting and “will be taking part in the various discussions taking place there”.

Report: IPCC scientists call for focus on regional climate risks

Pachauri is one of the most high profile climate officials on the planet, having led the IPCC since 2002. He is set to step down later this year.

Delegates at next week’s meeting will discuss the future role of the IPCC and how it can better advise policymakers on the prognosis for climate change, how to adapt to and mitigate its impacts.

Earlier this month Pachauri issued a proposal for the IPCC to deliver annual climate assessments, detailing how close the planet is to dangerous levels of warming.

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